


Under His Master's Eye

by bees_stories



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Master/Slave, Multi, dub con, non con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-15 06:19:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1294597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bees_stories/pseuds/bees_stories
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In another dimension a soldier is de-mobbed after a long and bitter war. Short on options, he drifts from space station to port looking for a new start. He falls into a high stakes game of chance, but when he gambles his life against a new ship, he realises that losing may be the better option. Meanwhile, Team Torchwood goes out on a routine recovery mission that has repercussions for Ianto. (Set during series 2, post-Adrift.)<br/>Based on a concept by Count_to_Seven.<br/>Beta by: 51stcenturyfox. Thanks!<br/>Over All Rating: Mature for adult concepts and images, graphic sexual situations, including the inappropriate use of marine animals, violence, slave themes, and issues of consent; non con and dub con.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

***

The man who in another dimension had become Jack Harkness, had a long war and he was tired. His home was gone. His people were gone. Even though he had done well, he was sick to the teeth of the forces. He had risen through the ranks, as much by attrition as skill, until he'd been promoted way past his comfort zone. It was one thing to be one of the troops, putting your life on the line with your comrades and mates, and another thing entirely to be the commander at the top, making the decision about who was going out in the field to get the hell bombed out of them, and who was going to hang back behind the lines where it was safe.

He was at loose ends. He had no real prospects. There was enough back pay accumulated in his account for a modest grubstake and that was it. He needed time. Time to re-acclimate to the civilian world. Time to figure out who he was. Time to figure out what he needed to be.

Until then, he needed a drink. He put his thumbprint on the final sheaf of paperwork that granted his freedom, gave a final salute to the Sergeant-Major in charge, and after he changed into his demob suit, went straight to the bar where he had several. There were too many beings in uniform around for Jaxx to feel like a civilian just yet, but he did feel considerably more relaxed by the time he ambled out and fell into a stream of Exes who, in various states of sobriety, were headed for the transportation corridor.

The demob station was strictly regulated, everything above board and regimented just as severely as the service had been. But the shuttles that streamed away from the spaceport could take an ex-trooper to any number of planets and space stations with more liberal values. Jaxx scanned the departure board, considering the possibilities.

Telos was reasonably civilised, had a decent casino, and he knew a gal from the Catering Corps who had settled there _and_ had offered him a place to start over. Deciding it was as good a destination as any other, Jaxx exchanged his travel voucher for a ticket and waited in the departure area with a whole lot of other aimless troopers, playing cards and telling outrageous lies of his front line exploits to pass the time.

***

"What is it?" Gwen peered at the long oblong container sitting in the middle of the playing field. "It looks a bit like a coffin."

Toshiko pushed her glasses higher up her nose and then looked down at the meter in her hand. "I'm getting a low level energy reading. But it's nothing we should be concerned with. It's safe to approach."

"It's a bit similar to the escape pod we have in the archive. But why would the environmental controls be on the outside?" Ianto pointed to a bank of lights and buttons on one side of the long, grey tube-like structure that had come through the rift.

"I don't know, we can work it out later," Jack said. "Can you lift it?"

Ianto looked for a handhold and bent his knees as he tugged upward experimentally. "Yep, should be all right, even without the sled."

"Good," Jack replied. He grinned suggestively. "I can think of much more fun ways to put out our backs."

Ianto shot him a disapproving look and then raised an eyebrow as his curiosity got the better of him.

Jack winked and then sobered as he tipped his head. "You grab your side, I'll take this one. Gwen, you bring the SUV closer. Tosh, better check in with Owen. That experiment he was running on those plants you recovered last week could send the Hub into lock down if it blows up."

Ianto bent towards the tube. "Jack, there's writing here, on the side and what looks like a logo. A sort of double figure eight. It's not in a language I've seen before." He ran his hand over the raised symbols. Lights flared to life, bathing him in their glow.

"Ianto!" Jack leapt forward and then froze as a low hum began to emanate from the tube. "Ianto, step away from that thing. Now!"

Ianto didn't reply. He stood rooted as the hum intensified and the light switched from yellow to purple. Alien words began to issue forth from an unseen speaker. Hastily, Toshiko juggled the meter in her hand and pulled a digital recorder from her pocket.

Heedless of his own safety, Jack ran the last few steps and reached out to pull Ianto clear. Lights flashed and a second alien voice issued what could have been a warning as Jack was physically repulsed by a force field. "Dammit!" he cried out as he tried and was rebuffed a second time. "Talk to me, Tosh."

Tosh nodded, struggling to answer Jack's dozen unasked questions. She took a cautious step closer and made an adjustment to the meter as she balanced the recorder on top of it. "It's scanning him, Jack. The nearest I can determine is it's running medical diagnostics. X-Ray, magnetic imagining. The works."

A beep that in any language sounded like an error code issued from the machine and abruptly the lights cut out. Ianto sagged and then shook his head as if clearing it. Then he yelped and jumped backwards, glaring at the alien device. "It stabbed me!" He winced as he stuck his finger into his mouth, reflexively nursing on the wound.

Jack pulled Ianto clear of the machine. He took Ianto's hand in his and frowned as he examined the stab wound. But before he could say anything, Owen cut over the comm channel.

_"Guys? I think you should wrap it up. The rift predictor just went off again. It looks like the drop point is going to be about two kilometres west of your location."_

Abruptly the light-polluted sky darkened. A fierce wind roared out of nowhere, whipping Jack's coattails around his legs and sending rubbish bins tumbling and leaves flying. Gwen rolled up in the SUV. Jack glanced skyward and swore as he recognised the source of the disturbance. "Everybody in. Now!"

He shoved Ianto towards the Range Rover. Toshiko was a few steps closer. She opened both doors and jumped into the passenger seat as Jack and Ianto clambered into the back. "Move! Move!" Jack ordered.

"I'm going! Hang on!" Gwen put her foot on the floor, roaring away from the playing field as the rift opened its maw.

Tosh pulled her laptop out from her satchel and flipped open the lid, hanging onto it to keep it steady as the SUV flew over a kerb and into the car park.

"I think you can ease off the accelerator, Gwen," Jack said. As she complied, he rolled down the window and stuck his head out to get a clear view of the park behind them. "We're clear."

Toshiko took a breath and then began to hammer away at her keyboard. She frowned. "I know we've postulated that the rift disgorging causes a vacuum effect, but now we have proof. That was a negative spike that correlated with the rift opening at another location."

"Why hasn't it happened before?" Gwen asked. "Why have we never had to run from the rift before?"

"To my knowledge, we've never been at the scene of a recovery when the rift opened at a secondary location," Toshiko replied. She continued to type, frowning at the keyboard as she did so. "We've learned so much about the rift, the negative spikes, and how dangerous they can be in the last few weeks. I'm still trying to work all that data into a new model."

"Right. Looks like we're going to be in for a busy night," Jack said as he tapped his comm. "Owen. Have you located the second event site? Good. Get over there and secure it until we can meet up with you. Send Gwen the coordinates." He shut down the comm-link before Owen could start complaining. "Gwen, lets get back to the tube. We still need to get it out of the park." He glanced over at Ianto. Worry pulled his face down into an uncertain expression. "You still with us?"

Ianto nodded. "I'm fine. I was a little woozy when you yanked me off my feet and into the car, but I'm all right now."

Jack met Ianto's smile with one of his own. "Yeah, well I still want Owen to give you a check up when we get back to base. Okay?"

They bumped over the parkland at a much more sedate pace then when they'd left it. Gwen slowed even further and finally rolled to a stop. "Tosh. Isn't this where we're meant to be?"

Toshiko glanced up from her computer. She frowned at the surrounding green space and then brought up the previous tracking coordinates they'd used to find the rift artefact. "It should be right there. Jack? The tube is gone."

"The rift giveth and the rift taketh away," Ianto said solemnly.

Jack's expression grew grim as he looked at each member of his team in turn. They'd had a narrow escape. Too narrow. "Amen," he thought, and then pulled himself back under control. "Come on, we've still got work to do. Let's get out of here."

Gwen nodded. She glanced down at the new coordinates that Owen had fed to the Range Rover's GPS system and headed out of the park.

***

Telos had once been strictly a mining planet. But as Jaxx looked down through the observation bay window, it was clear that the wild and woolly frontier days were well behind it. Now, a series of domed environmental habitats dominated the bleak and scarred grey landscape, beckoning all comers to enjoy its riches.

He caught a glimpse of the gemstone of the planet's tourist industry, the Crystal Casino, before the view-screens closed in preparation for landing and decided that after he checked in with Cookie, that would be his next destination. After all, he was way overdue for a little sparkle in his life after five grim cycles of war.

He resumed his assigned seat on the bench and belted in next to half a dozen other Exes. For the first time he noticed that even if they weren't dressed in the same dun brown trousers and jackets, that his fellow veterans all shared a look. Vaguely ill at ease, they held themselves more erect than the other travellers and seemed much more alert. Even the ones who'd clearly been hitting the bottle or the rod, trying to relax through chemical means as they attempted to prepare for whatever it was civilian life was about to throw at them.

Jaxx felt the tenseness in his own shoulders and realised his posture mimicked the other Exes. Deliberately, he relaxed, dropping his shoulders and letting go of the tension in his spine as he reminded himself that he wasn't in the forces any more.

He'd need to ditch the suit at the first opportunity as well. It was a sad fact of life that not all civilians were kind to Exes, blaming them for the war they fought, and the hardships it imposed on all galactic citizens. Although it was illegal to discriminate against forces personnel – to deny them housing or work – it still happened, and a fair few number came to find that facing down the enemy was preferable to trying to live amongst their former friends and neighbours, and that re-enlistment was preferable to a life of perpetually trying to start over as they wandered from planet to planet trying and failing to put down roots.

Successful Exes did what Jaxx was doing. They looked up old comrades who were willing to lend a helping hand. Jaxx smiled as he thought of Cookie. They'd met during the Bacchus Campaign. Cookie had been the NCO's mess steward. Jaxx had been a forward scout, sneaking over the lines to gather Intel that couldn't be obtained through more conventional means. Cookie ran a still in her spare time, supplying the mess with potent hooch that the senior officers would have confiscated for themselves if they'd known the source. Jaxx had covered for her when it was in danger of being found out. They'd had a celebratory fling that had lasted until the planet had been overrun and their unit decimated.

Unlike most of Jaxx 's battlefield lovers, they'd kept in touch, posting notes to one another for no other reason then, by that point in the war, they had no one but each other. All the friends they'd made during their recruitment and the early cycles of the war were dead. Getting mail, even if it was only a couple of lines about the lousy weather or the crummy food on another planet, was pretty damn important. After she'd been invalided out, Cookie had kept writing, talking of her restaurant and of a place for Jaxx at it behind the bar, if he still wanted it after the war.

Cookie was a friend at a time when friends were few and far between and Jaxx was looking forward to a proper reunion. He decided that everything, including proper sleep and new clothes could wait. He'd find Cookie's place first and surprise her.

The onboard public address system chimed an important announcement was about to be broadcast. The Exes around him straightened to attention. Jaxx did like the experienced travellers amongst the civilians and shifted against his seat rest, giving the system a portion of his attention, just in case the canned address had something interesting to share.

It didn't.

_"Blah. Blah. Quarantined items must be declared. Blah. Blah. Offensive weapons were banned by Executive Order 2019. Blah. Blah. Agricultural goods ... Declaration statements must be completely filled out prior to disembarkation and a steward would come through the cabin to pick up any that hadn't been collected on the last pass through. Passengers with baggage to have inspected should queue in the Customs Hall to the left. Thank you for your attention and have a pleasant stay."_

His paperwork was done. He had nothing to declare, and any offensive weapons Jaxx had once owned were left in the custody of the Forces. The only relevant information was about the queues. He had done enough standing in line for one lifetime. If he could bypass the throng who would inevitably move around like milling cattle, delaying his exit from the arrival area, he'd listen to a dozen public address notices, gratefully. Checking under his seat that his hold all was still secure, Jaxx leaned back against his seat rest and prepared for landing as the shuttle finally bumped against the landingway.

***

The turbulence was worst inside the mouth of the rift, but once the tube shot beyond the maw, the currents calmed and the fierce buffeting gentled.

Inside the tube, a diagnostic circuit began to examine the blood and tissue sample it had extracted. Other systems came to life, injecting nutrient solution into the central chamber and dispensing a complex blend of proteins and polymers, warming them to the proper temperature to incubate a new replicant.

***

Cookie's place was located in the residential sector of the mining dome. Jaxx bought a transport card that gave him free access to the entire network for a week and then boarded a gleaming white mag-train for what was hopefully the final leg of his journey.

He wasn't the only one in a demob suit. Half the Exes he'd shipped with had decided to make the mining sector their destination as well. Even though they were all out of the service now, the enlisteds could still scent officer on him and reflexively they segregated, taking seats at the far end of the car, leaving Jaxx to sit by himself for the high speed journey through the tube network.

The Exes got off at the recruiting depot for The Telos Minerals and Mining Consortium, which was still the largest employer on the planet, although the Crystal Casino and its allied businesses were running a close second. At the next stop, the car started to filled up again with workers from the smelting operation. At the stop after that, the miners boarded, weary looking people of several species, mostly but not all, bipedal.

Jaxx felt at home amongst the hard working people, and he knew that the Exes he'd left behind at the recruiting depot would feel at home as well. Coming to Telos started to feel more and more like the right choice.

The mag-train rolled up to his stop at last. Jaxx jostled his way out of the car and took a few seconds to get oriented before stepping out onto the moving walkway. Out of habit he scanned the various shops, taking note of potential businesses he might want to explore later, after he'd got himself settled. He'd need to transfer his credits to a local depository and there was still the issue of clothes to sort out. Maybe a barber could do something about his hair to soften its lines and make him look less like an Ex, but that would come later, after his reunion with Cookie.

He hopped lightly off the belt a quarter klick from the address he'd memorised and strolled the remaining distance to help him work off the case of butterflies that was building up in his stomach. He could just see Cookie now, all one hundred kilos of hard muscle and limber sinew capped off with a tumble of pink curls and secret smiles, coming out from behind the bar. She'd probably salute, just to give him a hard time, before pouring the mother of all drinks, and then the party would really get started. And oh what a party it would be. Jaxx had earmarked part of his grubstake just for the occasion.

But the anticipatory grin that kept breaking over his face faded as he closed the final few strides and saw the gathered uniforms of what could only be the local constabulary.

Cautiously, Jaxx moved forward towards a knot of men in off duty coveralls. "What happened?"

A craggy, worn out fellow replied. "Tragedy. She survived the wars, only to be cut down during a bar fight. How is that for luck?"

"She?" Jaxx said urgently. Inside his head a litany of 'No. No. No. Not Cookie. Please, Maker, not Cookie.' began to loop as the sinking feeling in his gut grew stronger. "She, who?"

The older man looked up from his knotted hands and seemed to focus on Jaxx properly. "You're an Ex yourself. Were you a friend of Cookie's?"

Jaxx nodded, feeling sick as he latched onto the miner's use of past tense. He could feel the blood draining from his head and braced his legs against the floor plates to keep from stumbling as his knees began to wobble.

The man sighed. "Then I'm sorry to be the one to tell you; there was a fight between two of your own. A lot of Exes come here, because Cookie made them welcome. But the lads had a hard day at the mines and one thing led to another. Cookie tried to calm them down, and then when it came to blows … He shook his head. "Unlucky punch. It sent her spinning right into the bar. Hit her head."

He mimicked a blow to temple, adding a smacking noise for good measure. Jaxx closed his eyes, willing himself not to recreate the accident in his mind, but the description was too vivid and he saw it perfectly as he stumbled away on numb feet.

It didn't make any sense. Cookie was solidly built, but she was also agile and light on her feet. She danced around her kitchen to avoid prep tables and clumsy helpers, never dropping as much as a biscuit. And in a fight, there was no one Jaxx would rather have at his back. Cookie could anticipate a punch as easily as she could tell a pot of stew was going to boil over by the trembling of its lid.

It didn't make sense.

Jaxx didn't remember wandering down the corridor and boarding the mag-train out of the mining dome. He didn't remember getting off and changing for the line that would take him to the tourist dome. He just let his feet and public transportation carry him away from what little he'd planned for his post-service life.

***

The Crystal Casino was _dazzling_.

The management must have anticipated the effect its gaudy magnificence would have on their clientèle because they built an observation deck just inside the entrance. Jaxx let the moving ramp carry him upward along with a press of other tourists, staring in gobsmacked awe as water tumbled downward from a shelf of diamonds and fell, sparkling, into a pool far below their feet before being projected back upwards in a breathtaking display. Some of his fellow patrons, overcome by a desire to ensure their luck, stood at the edge of the platform with their eyes closed and threw credit chits into the water, wishing for good fortune at the gaming wheels and tables.

The waterfall was only the beginning. A dozen massive chandeliers, each one a monument to crystalline excess, sent their lights shimmering over the gold and emerald gaming tables, the snow-white marbled floors and the black and silver bedecked croupiers, wait-staff, and security personnel who efficiently circulated amongst the tourists and serious players.

Jaxx found a spot at the rail and contemplated the possibilities. When the initial wave of shock and grief had passed and he realised that Cookie would be disappointed that he was seeking solace alone and at the bottom of a bottle, he'd checked into an overnight accommodation, taken a long hot water shower and fallen into a deep sleep. When he woke it was a new day and he had a promise to keep.

When the word came – _If_ the word came, Cookie always corrected – one of them had made the final exit, the survivor would, at the first opportunity, go on the biggest blow out practical. Eat. Drink. Recreate... But above all have some laughs, because soldiers didn't get funerals; on the battlefield there just wasn't time.

Below, shining wheels of fortune spun round and round, luring the easy marks by paying out small prizes every few turns. Past the wheels came the lever machines, one-armed bandits that enticed the timid into dropping a few credits and then a few credits more with their bright lights and joyous bells and the promise that if they just stuck it out a few pulls longer then they too could be a winner.

The tables were where the real money could be made and lost and that was where Jaxx directed his attention. Machines could be rigged, but the cards and dice were synthesized under the vigilant eyes of a representative of the interplanetary gaming commission, levelling the field between the house and the players. Discreet employees of the commission maintained a vigil over the dealers and players both. Jaxx nodded to himself as he picked them out of the crowd of professional gamblers that populated the tables at the rear of the casino.

He watched for a few more minutes then tossed a chit over the side, hoping wherever Cookie ended up she was happy, and that her happiness would bring him luck, and then he made his way below.

Two pointedly distracting holographic fireworks displays later, Jaxx was up in the chits. The player at the end of the table decided to cash in, leaving him alone. He was hungry, somewhat smashed from nursing the glass at his elbow that seemed to be constantly freshened, and ready to pack it in himself. He handed his dice back to the croupier and signalled he was ready to cash out. A new player sat down to his left. Reflexively, Jaxx smiled at him and then stared appreciatively. Nice build. Interesting features. Pale blue skin that set off arresting jet black eyes that would be easy to get lost in.

The guy smiled back. "You struck lucky."

Jaxx shrugged modestly. "I've done all right. You?"

"I'm just about to try my luck." The croupier slid a pair of dice over but they were declined with a wave of a long, elegant hand whose fingers were joined with vestigial webbing. "I came to deliver an invitation."

"Have you now." Jaxx pursed his lips and tilted his head, trying to absorb the sudden change of possibilities and do a quick risk assessment as the messenger removed a key from the inside pocket of his very well-tailored jacket. Whoever he worked for liked the hired help to look sharp, right down to the accessories. The messenger wore matching gold neck and wrist cuffs wrought with an intricate interwoven pattern.

He offered the key to Jaxx. "Citizen Moliki would like you to be his guest."

"That's mighty neighbourly of him." Jaxx let his gaze drop to the key and then he looked back at the messenger. "Who is Citizen Moliki? And what's his interest in me?"

The stranger smiled a mysterious smile. "Why not accept his invitation and find out for yourself? I promise you the delights he wishes to offer will surpass any you would be afforded as a mere tourist."

"A high roller type." Jaxx mulled the proposition. Professional escorts were readily available, willing to cater to a vast multitude of sexual interests and proclivities. If the mysterious Citizen Moliki wanted to role play getting down and dirty in a foxhole he could find that easily enough amongst the specialists that catered to the avant garde. But if he was rich enough and self indulgent enough to want the genuine article … then why not play along? It wasn't as if he had any massively important plans to put on hold.

He ran a fingertip along the length of the key and upward over the long, pale blue fingers that held it and smiled. "When you put it like that … I accept." He let his fingers trail higher over the other man's gilded wristband. "On one condition."

The messenger glanced down speculatively at Jaxx's fingers before meeting his eyes. "And what is that?"

"I never take gifts from strangers," Jaxx replied. "And we haven't been properly introduced. I'm Jaxx."

"Ah." The messenger smiled. "They call me 'Fetch' on account of my job."

"Fetch?" Jaxx grinned and shrugged. The universe was a weird and inexplicable place most of the time. Who was he to question someone else's nickname? "Well... Fetch, you got me. You better lead the way to your master."

They exited the casino through a side door off limits to everyone but the security staff. Periodically, Jaxx shot appraising glances at Fetch, and once or twice clocked those that were checking him out as well. Though the situation was unusual, nothing about it pinged his highly developed sense of self-preservation, so he sauntered, relaxed and easy, down the corridor to a private lift. A guard verified Fetch's identity, gave Jaxx the once-over, and then admitted them.

"They don't take chances around here, do they?" Jaxx commented once the doors had whispered shut.

"The guests that stay in this part of the dome tend to be … " Fetch hesitated. "Important."

"I'm guessing we're not talking the host of _Let's Talk, Ursa Minor?_ " Jaxx whistled softly when Fetch nodded and began to wonder what he'd let himself in for.

***

After the glittering excesses of the casino the lavish suite Fetch escorted Jaxx into seemed subdued. Recessed lights. Elegant wood and genuine leather furnishings. Rich carpets to muffle their footsteps. Jaxx found himself impressed. The gigantic space made the room he'd rented in the tourist accommodation seem like a broom cupboard.

"This is cosy," he murmured.

"This is just the receiving chamber." Fetch extended his arm towards one of three doors. "Your room is through this door. I took the liberty of checking you out of your accommodation and having your things moved." He took a few steps and pointed at another door. "The recreation area, a private bathing pool and games area, catering and so on, is through that door. And my master's chamber is through the final door."

"And where do you fit in the grand scheme of things?" Jaxx asked. "I haven't put you out, have I?"

Fetch gave Jaxx one of those highly speculative looks. "That, Jaxx, depends on you."

"Does it now." Wheels on wheels of possibilities began to spin in Jaxx's head.

"Indeed. The Master tasked me with seeing to your every comfort. If you are hungry, I am to feed you whatever you crave . If you are tired, I am to make sure your bed is exactly as you require so that you slip effortlessly into sleep. If you have other, more physical needs," Fetch drew a fingertip down Jaxx's arm from shoulder to wrist. "I am to satisfy them exactly as you desire."

Jaxx felt a stirring he hadn't had the time or energy to indulge for way too long roar to wakening as the speculative looks he had exchanged with Fetch took on new meaning. "And you're good with all of this?"

Fetch licked his lips and then undid the lowest button of Jaxx's demob jacket. He toyed with the second button and then flipped it free. "Perfectly. Would you care to continue this in the bathing room? Or would you prefer to retire?"

It had been a long time since Jaxx had faced such an interesting dilemma. For too many cycles he'd been at the mercy of the command structure's whims, jumping unquestioning when ordered to do so. Now he was flying solo in the command chair. There was no one above him to question his decisions, and he found himself hesitating, playing for time as he considered his options. What did he want?

Fetch had undone two more buttons while Jaxx was thinking. Getting naked was always a good starting point. From there, they could explore a little. And exploring - figuring out what fired a new lover's rockets, especially when they were of a different species - was half the fun.

Near the glass wall that displayed a holographic projection of a setting sun was a carpet of living green grass. Jaxx's eyes lit upon it and he smiled. "Oh, it's been a long time since I've seen anything like that." He took Fetch by the hand and pulled him along, dropping to his knees to inspect it more closely. Grass against bare skin … He'd only experienced that one time, and this wasn't any native thatch like that had been – rough and prickly against his back as he was pressed against it – but a carefully groomed lawn of velvetgrass.

"Ah, I do like your way of thinking," Fetch said. "If you'll allow me a liberty, I believe I know what else you might enjoy."

Jaxx nodded his approval and began to strip out of his clothes as Fetch moved across the room to a hospitality area decked out with a bar and refrigeration unit. He flopped down onto the grass, arms and legs akimbo, revelling in the sensation of the velvetgrass as it began to wiggle against his skin. When he opened his eyes, Fetch was kneeling on the perimeter of the rug holding a carved box on which he balanced a tray of fruit, a bottle and two goblets. He set the tray down within Jaxx's easy reach and asked, "Shall I disrobe for you?"

He could get used to being catered to. Jaxx propped himself up on his elbows and nodded his permission.

Deftly, Fetch undid the buttons of his jacket, and then let it fall open to reveal a tightly muscled chest and well defined abdomen. On the sides of his neck, just below the golden collar, were striations of darker blue. Once he had given Jaxx an eyeful, he discarded the jacket entirely, pushing it off his shoulders so that it slipped sinuously down his arms and landed with a whisper behind him. He rose gracefully, stepped out of his slipper-like shoes, revealing feet with wide-spread toes, and then undid the clasps that bound his trousers, stepping lightly out of them as they fell.

Fetch stood naked, save for his matching gold neckband and wrist cuffs. He held out his arms, displaying his considerable charms. "Do I meet your approval?"

Jaxx took his time, letting his gaze roam. Fetch might have been tall, blue, bipedal and handsome, but he wasn't exactly human either. No overt mammary structures on the chest. Nothing like the usual genitalia hanging between his legs. Not that it really mattered, Fetch had been tasked with making _him_ feel good, and he had already demonstrated he was eager to give it his best shot. "Oh, yeah." He rolled over onto his stomach and inched his way closer to the edge of the lawn before smiling his approval. "In fact, you look good enough to eat."

Fetch chuckled softly as he reclined next to Jaxx. "It's funny you should put it like that." He picked up a smallish red berry from the tray and offered it. "Open your mouth. And when I put the berry in, crush it against the roof with your tongue, but don't chew it.

Jaxx hesitated and then stuck out his tongue. Crushing the fruit released a spray of tangy-sweet juice and he couldn't hold back a noise of approval.

"Now lean back and close your eyes," Fetch instructed.

Unsure of what to expect, Jaxx complied. Warmth began to flow through his veins, making the tickling of the velvetgrass seem even more sensual. Fetch touched Jaxx's right cheek and then the left, drawing his fingers slowly along the skin until both hands cupped his chin. He leaned in for a kiss and Jaxx opened his mouth, offered his juice-stained tongue, and gasped as Fetch licked away the remains of the crushed berry.

It was just a brush, a quick exploration, but it sent a jolt of pleasure straight through his blood and bones.

"Aphrodisiac fruit," Jaxx muttered as he cupped the back of Fetch's head and held him in place for another mind-sizzling kiss. "Not really necessary." He bit down lightly on the skin above the golden collar, before rolling so that their positions were reversed. "You're hot enough all on your lonesome." He ran his fingers over the pale blue expanse of chest, noting the difference in rib structure and how Fetch trembled when he tickled along the edges, but gasped when he repeated the same motion down the middle. Dipping down, he began to lick and suck, varying his rhythm and intensity until he had Fetch squirming and decided that maybe a little give and take wasn't a bad thing after all.

Fetch moaned and reached upwards, stilling Jaxx's hands. "Stop. Please stop."

"Sensitive?"

"Very. Besides, I was meant to pleasure you." Fetch tilted his head towards the tray and box he'd brought. "I have many other delights to show you, if you'll – " He glanced down at his pinned hips.

Jaxx grinned and shifted, noticing absently that Fetch's colour had deepened by several shades.

He sprawled onto his back and watched as Fetch selected several somethings from the box. "I promise you'll enjoy what I've got planned, but it can be a bit … frustrating. Spread your arms out to the sides, palms down."

Jaxx complied. Fetch put a cuff over each wrist that fixed itself securely to the grass. "Now your feet." He tilted his head thoughtfully. "Legs spread. Feet on the ground." He smiled as he raised a pitcher over Jaxx's torso and poured out a thin stream onto Jaxx's stomach. "This is benola sap. It's known for its soothing properties." He fixed the leg cuffs and then slipped a mask over Jaxx's eyes.

The sap was a pale golden colour. It glittered in the subdued light. And when it hit Jaxx's skin, it was silky rather than sticky feeling. Jaxx sighed and let his eyelids flutter closed under the mask as Fetch began to massage the sap into his skin. "Still comfortable?"

Jaxx nodded as fingertips glided over his ribcage and down to caress his hips. He bucked upwards as drops of sap hit his erection and slid down his thighs, coating them.

"Take a breath," Fetch said softly.

Jaxx heard movement and then something warm grazed his cock. The sensation repeated twice more and then, without warning, he was enveloped. Hundreds of tiny mouths began to suck along the length of his shaft. He gasped as blood surged southward, making him giddy. Deliberately, he filled his lungs and let it slowly out again, suddenly understanding why Fetch had tied him down.

Abruptly, the mouthing ceased and fingertips caressed the inside of his thighs and over his balls. Then there was a new sensation as something blunt and rubbery rode over his flesh and nudged between his legs before it was pressed slowly inward and the mouthing began again.

Jaxx rocked against his bonds, rolling his pelvis upwards as he was repeatedly penetrated and the mouths teased his cock. Sweat broke out over his skin. He had to fight to keep his breathing even as he was massaged from both within and without.

He was on the verge of the point of no return. He moaned gutturally as he tore grass out of the lawn. Once again, abruptly, all sensation ceased. All except for Fetch brushing soothing kisses against his brow and over his lips and lightly caressing his limbs, steadying him. "Are you all right?"

Jaxx nodded. He found his centre and slowly the feeling of imminent crisis subsided.

"Good." Fetch kissed his knee and withdrew the anal toy. "Because the best is yet to come." He bit down lightly, poured more sap over Jaxx's hole and inserted a new toy, thicker and irregularly shaped. Once it was seated firmly, it began to undulate.

Jaxx moaned, opened mouthed, unable to control himself any longer. He wanted the sensations that were overwhelming him to stop. He wanted them to go on forever. The pleasure was so great, it teetered on the edge of pain. He tilted his head back against the grass that still tickled his back and exposed his throat in submission as he came.

His skin throbbed. His cock twitched. His arms and legs trembled helplessly. When he opened his eyes and the mask was pulled away, Fetch was looking at him with a hazy lust-filled expression. His skin had turned vivid blue. Jaxx tried to reach upward, but his arms were still pinned. Fetch shook his head, as if mesmerised, and then he undid the bonds and let Jaxx pull him downward. They scissored their legs and rocked as they kissed, grinding against one another. Kissing and touching. Nipping and sucking wherever they could reach exposed skin.

Fetch's body abruptly stiffened and he cried out. He buried his face against Jaxx's neck for a long moment and then rolled off abruptly, flexing upward and exposing his body as pearly fluid seeped from a line of newly exposed pores that ran down his breastbone as he lay panting.

***

The procreation pod tumbled along the eddies and currents of space-time. The embryo within absorbed the nutrients from its bath and grew, assuming the form of its genetic donor. Periodically, the diagnostic circuits ran checks, certifying the accuracy of the copying process. Each time they returned a result of 'verified', a new process activated, sending the replicant closer to maturation as the pod was drawn inexorably closer to a breach in dimensional space.

To be continued … 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Jaxx makes a life-changing decision and almost immediately has second thoughts when he meets the Citizens of Moringa.

***

Jaxx woke up alone in bed with no idea of how he'd got there. He shut his eyes again, enjoying the warm nest he'd created from the luxurious bedclothes, and ran his hands over his body, letting his sense memories recreate pictures.

Fetch handing him a goblet. The contents just barely cool and effervescent, as if it should have been consumed much sooner than it had been, but still delicious and refreshing.

Being hand fed pieces of fruit and sweetmeats. None of which he'd ever tasted before. Lapping the juice from Fetch's fingers and finding out that the delicate webbing was amazingly sensitive. Deliberately dropping a morsel onto his thigh and Fetch taking his time eating it, kissing and licking the skin around it until he had Jaxx trembling.

Petting the back of Fetch's head, the fine fuzz soft under his fingers, as Fetch sucked him off and then getting his own back for the exquisite torment by pinning Fetch against the side of the bath and making him turn cobalt for a second time.

That bath … So much clean warm buoyant water all in one place. Jaxx had lain on his back with his arms extended and floated on it as Fetch had plied a cloth over his skin. The people who stayed in this section of the casino were rich indeed. On so many planets water was a carefully rationed commodity. Troopers took sonics or went without. The shower in his accommodation had been the first running water he'd seen for bathing in cycles.

Finally, Fetch leading him by the hand to bedroom. Making sure the pillow beneath his head was exactly so before withdrawing to stand at the foot of the bed with his head bowed, waiting for instructions as to whether he was to remain or to withdraw...

Giving the command that Fetch should stay before drifting off to sleep, convinced he'd just spent the best night of his life and wondering if it was some kind of dream or hallucination. Unsure if he hadn't, in an attack of numb grief, gone to the pleasure dome and blown a wad of chits by jacking into a holographic suite where a computer had read his body and mind to create the perfect illusionary experience.

But the bed was real. The room, with its many comforts, was real. And the pleasant soreness of his body was _definitely real_. As was the soft sound of footsteps and the scent of …

"Is that coffea?" Jaxx sat up. "Real coffea?" Fetch was standing halfway between the bed and the door to the outer chamber, holding a tray in his hands. He was still naked, which was definitely a pleasant sight to wake up to. The aroma coming from his tray was tangy and mouthwatering, and much more intense than the thin substitute he'd been surviving on during the war.

"Everything in my master's house is the genuine article," Fetch replied as he handed Jaxx a palm-sized bowl. "He never stints his guests."

Jaxx inhaled the steam rising off of the bowl. "I need to meet this master of yours."

"And so you shall," Fetch replied as he unfolded the legs of the tray he was holding and then once Jaxx had scooted up to sit, placed it over his lap. "After you're fed and dressed. He has a proposition that he'd like to talk over with you."

Jaxx looked up from the tray and the delicacies it contained; foods no one in his sector of the galaxy had seen since well before the war. He raised an eyebrow. "Yeah? What sort of proposition?" he asked.

Fetch glanced around the room, silently inviting Jaxx to follow his gaze before replying, "One that will change your life."

Given no matter what was offered would be a change from his current rudderless existence, Jaxx didn't press the point as he dug into his breakfast, and then once he was finished, let Fetch help him into clothes that were cut much better than the massed produced demob suits, and escort him through into his host's suite.

***

Fetch entered first. Jaxx followed, taking in the view-screens of underwater scenery that turned the light-coloured furnishings of the suite into a marine habitat. He fought down a feeling of panic, assuring himself that it was an illusion and he was still breathing air and not water.

The suite's occupant reclined in a large, throne-like chair with a high back and expansive footrest. It needed to be expansive to accommodate the four feet that rested upon it.

"Citizen Moliki, may I present Jaxx, late of the United Forces," Fetch said, before withdrawing to a corner of the room and dropping submissively to his knees.

Jaxx tried not to stare. The only similarity between Fetch and his master was the weird lighting turned them both the same shade of pale blue. Fetch was bipedal and, discounting his sexual anatomy, more or less humanoid in build. He had hair, even if it was sort of a carpet of pale fuzz over his scalp.

Citizen Moliki had four arms, two of which ended in very long fingers and two of which were paddle-like. He had four legs as well. His body was covered by a wrapped garment of the same silky fabric that Jaxx's new clothes were made from. His head was egg-shaped and bald. He had a beak-like nose and a wide, thin lipped mouth.

To give himself time to wrap his head around Citizen Moliki, Jaxx took a cue from Fetch and respectfully dipped his gaze to the floor. The underwater décor made a lot more sense if he factored in the idea that Moliki's people, whoever they were, evolved from sea, rather than land creatures, but it still made him feel more than a little claustrophobic. Still, how a person decorated their private chamber was their business. If the Citizen liked seascapes, who was he to complain?

Head sorted, Jaxx looked up and gave his host a wide smile. "Honoured to meet you, Citizen. Your hospitality has been an unexpected pleasure."

Moliki inclined his head gracefully. "I spotted you on our arrival and you interested me. One trooper amongst dozens, and yet, you still stood out. For a weary man there is still an air of ... vitality about you. An energy I found most alluring. And as it happens, I'm in need of such a person." 

"You're offering me a job?" Jaxx blurted. He glanced around the watery landscape wondering just what sort of job someone like Moliki could possibly want him for.

"A position in my household." Moliki inclined one of his hands towards Fetch. "Fetch has been a good and faithful companion, one whom I regret must leave my side. I want you to take his place. Your surroundings will be quite comfortable. Your duties will not be over onerous. You may even find them … pleasant. Of course in return I will require a few minor concessions on your part."

"Concessions." Jaxx glanced backwards at Fetch. Fetch who stood naked – save for a collar and cuffs – and submissive in the corner of the room with his head bowed. Whose name wasn't a name as much as a job description. Who had been tasked with indulging Jaxx's every whim and pleasuring him within an inch of his life. He began to get an inkling of what Moliki was on about and wasn't sure he liked the sound of it after all.

"Uh, not that this hasn't been fun." Jaxx grinned and took a step backwards, looking for potential alternative exits in case things got sticky. "But I think I'll respectfully decline."

Moliki rippled in a shrug-like gesture. "Are you sure? Consider your options carefully, Ex-trooper Jaxx. What exactly are your prospects?"

Not to put too fine a point on the matter, but he hadn't any. Jaxx shrugged back nonchalantly. "I've got a little put away. Enough for a one-man freighter. I'm quick on my feet and not unwilling to take chances. I'll make out."

"Your optimism does you credit," Moliki said. He clapped his hands together. Fetch snapped to, rapidly arranging a small table, chairs, and a packet of cards and dice. "I like you, Jaxx, and your short time in my presence has proved … diverting. Would you entertain me a little longer?"

Jaxx pursed his lips as he studied his host. He hadn't done anything especially entertaining, at least that he knew of. Unless … A sneaking suspicion crawled over his skin and he wondered if Moliki had a thing for voyeurism. "Entertain you, how?"

Moliki inclined a hand towards the table. "One round of Five Card Tango. If you win, I'll stake you a ship, no ties binding. If I win, you will accept my offer for a turn. If your service is satisfactory, I'll give you the ship and you can go on your way."

If there was a hidden angle, Jaxx couldn't see it. The Forces had used his body in a lot less pleasant way for the last six turns. Fetch, as far as he could see, was clean, fit, healthy, and happy with his lot in life. And he had the feeling that Moliki was a creature of his word. "Yeah, okay, why not?" He took his place at the table. Fetch sat down across from him and offered the cards.

Jaxx inspected the deck and the dice. The seals were intact. He broke them open, shuffled the disc-shaped cards well and then dealt them out, three down and two up, before removing his dice from their wrapper.

Fetch had a six and a three of triangles showing. Jaxx had a pair of clowns. Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. He decided to stand pat and let the dice tell the tale.

Fetch rolled a pair of sixes, which made his hand considerably stronger. He passed the dice over, his expression curiously intent.

Jaxx cupped the dice in his hand and blew on them for luck. He thought about the great time he'd had in Fetch's company. Of the good food and enough fresh water to bathe in. He thought about the weary faces of the miners and smelters he'd seen as he'd travelled on the mag-train, and of a future scraping out a living hauling ore or supplies to planets blasted to pieces by the war. Despite his nonchalant bravado, he was tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of living by his wits and nerves. He'd come to Telos because Cookie had promised him a place behind a bar serving drinks to men who had more grit than he did, because they willingly went into the mines and the ore processing plant. Jobs that, at times, were almost as dangerous as being a front line trooper. 

He'd been brave during his service because he'd had to be; troopers lived and died together. But now the only person depending on him was him. He could win the ship and strike out on his own, but what for? Moliki was giving him an opportunity. A soft, cushy opportunity. So why was he looking a gift tandor in the mouth?

Jaxx set down the dice, picked up his cards and folded his hand. "Citizen Moliki, you have yourself a companion." He lifted an eyebrow at Fetch and rose from the table to stand before his new master. The fastenings on his jacket and trousers weren't that difficult to navigate on his own, and he flicked them open with the economy learnt during cycles of rapid turnouts, stripping efficiently. When he was naked he raised his arms outward and did a slow one-eighty, submitting himself for inspection and final approval.

***

One positive aspect of the war was it had increased Jaxx's knowledge of galactic geography exponentially. Keeping up with the names of the systems and planets they were fighting and dying over became more important the higher he rose in the ranks. But he had never heard of Moringa, at least not until Fetch had pointed it out on a star chart.

He wasn't alone. The residents of Moringa were a highly insular bunch and liked to keep themselves to themselves. Their planet was mostly closed to outworlders and with the exception of Moliki, most of them disdained travel, preferring to let any off-world business interests to be run by intermediaries.

The government was a plutocracy. A few wealthy houses held the power. Everyone else was an employee, an indentured servant, or a slave. But since the planet was peaceful and prosperous at a time when most everywhere else in the galaxy was fighting for crumbs, no one complained. At least not within earshot of the citizens.

The sound of the engines changed. Jaxx opened his eyes and looked out the viewport at his new home. It was a watery planet dotted with clouds and irregular land masses.

According to Fetch, Moliki had business interests all over the planet, but his fiefdom was based on one of the larger islands in the southern hemisphere that from space looked a bit like a crescent moon. Jaxx whistled through his teeth as the pilot did a course correction and the it came into view.

Moliki chuckled when he saw Jaxx staring out the window. "Excited to see your new home, boy?"

Jaxx nodded. Telos was the first place he'd been to after the peace and even then he'd been in the company of fellow troopers. Although he was decked out in his new clothes, he felt even more naked than he'd been when he'd exposed himself for inspection. He missed his body armour and his side arms. He frowned at the peculiar reaction.

Moliki must have picked up on his anxiety. "Come here, boy." He tugged gently on the lead attached to Jaxx's collar.

The lead was made of the same sort of strong, black alloy as his collar. The collar that signified to everyone that he was a trainee, and thus should be scolded and corrected for his mistakes, but not severely punished. It was odd. When he'd left the troopers he had risen as far as an enlistee could without favour or family position. He'd survived battles and even a stint as a prisoner of war. Now he was starting at the bottom again; he was the slaves' equivalent of a greenie. Only this time instead of a circle on his sleeve, he would work towards getting a silver collar, like most of the servants around him. He doubted, in a turn of service, he would rise to gold status. Those lucky few had special favour within their master's households and were permitted a degree of autonomy. The highest, and least attainable, rank was blue. Although he'd tried not to, Fetch had broken down in tears when his golden collar and cuffs had been removed and the new, blue symbols of his master's trust had been placed around his neck and wrists. Blue was the closest to freedom a Moringan slave ever got.

Obediently, Jaxx took his place, kneeling at his master's feet. Moliki stroked his head soothingly. "There'll be a lot for you to get used to, my lad, no doubt about it. But you'll settle in, just you wait and see, Fetch." Moliki frowned. "It seems odd, calling you that. Doesn't quite suit you. Still have to have a 'Fetch', it's tradition." One of Moliki's fingered hand drifted down Jaxx's nape and over his collar. He stuck a fingertip between the two, checking the fit. "Not too tight?"

Jaxx hadn't been given permission to speak. He shook his head instead. Moliki continued to pet him, thoughtfully. "Tell you what, boy, 'Fetch' will be your public name. In private … well, we'll see, shall we? Something good will come to me."

The pilot cut over the comm channel announcing their final descent. Moliki made what Jaxx had begun to think of as his fake-stern face. "Now, off you go. Back to your kennel. Can't disobey Pilot. We all must strap in for landing."

Jaxx bowed his head and then withdrew. On boarding he had been put in a reasonably large cage at the rear of the compartment. As confined spaces went, it was more than adequate, as a POW he'd seen worse. There was a thickly padded mat on the floor and, in the event of turbulence, he would be protected from buffeting. Still, it was a long way to Moringa and a cage was a cage. Being held in one brought back some memories he'd rather stay buried. Moliki had noticed his fidgeting and taken pity, attaching the lead, but otherwise giving him permission to move about freely.

Fetch hadn't said anything about leads. There had been a raised spot on his collar, but Jaxx had taken it as part of the intricate embellishments and attached no other significance.

Mistake.

He also hadn't said anything about kennels. Although it was theoretically possible that Jaxx should have taken a hint from the low, platform-like piece of furniture in Moliki's chamber that Fetch didn't always get to sleep in the second bedchamber.

But, a deal was a deal. So far he'd been treated kindly. 'Boy' was a step up from some of the names he'd been called as a raw recruit in the troopers and being patted on the head was a damn sight better than the hazing he'd received. As long as he kept thinking in those terms, he'd make it through all right.

He'd make it through all right, Jaxx thought again as the shuttle touched down.

***

Other than the collars around the workers' necks, the spaceport looked like any other. Which in its way was reassuring. A hovercraft pulled up to the landing ramp and Citizen Moliki, with Jaxx on his lead, was deferentially escorted inside for the final leg of their journey.

Jaxx felt eyes upon him. When he looked up he saw that he was the object of quiet conversation, the sort that was conveyed with tilts of the head or chin. He let it roll off his back. He was a stranger in a strange land and he stood out. The people he saw looked similar but not identical to Fetch. The field attendants and maintenance workers were shorter and stockier, not to mention coral-toned rather than blueish. Most of them had silver collars. A few, who looked to be in positions of authority, wore gold.

The hovercraft floated out of the spaceport, down a long stretch of road, and finally drifted over a sand spit. Jaxx gasped as a wide, blue-green bay opened out before them and the craft revved its engines before darting out onto the water.

The scent of salt spray brought back memories of Boshane and the peninsula that he'd once called home. Gone now. Destroyed in the first major engagement of the war. Its peace destroyed long before when slavers had decided that the planet was a rich hunting ground and ripe for their picking. He turned away from the water and huddled on the floor of the hovercraft near Citizen Moliki's feet, trying to blot out the sounds of his friends and family screaming as ships raced overhead.

Moliki picked up on Jaxx's distress, but not the reason for it. He patted his head. "There, there, boy, we'll be home soon."

Home. Or as close as it came for a drifter like him.

***

When they got to the villa, Citizen Moliki was met by a pair of retainers. The first, 'Clock' was charged with the smooth operation of the master's home and diary. The second, 'Cook' was charged with the residents' well-being, including that of Jaxx.

Moliki handed over his end of the lead reluctantly. "Get him fed and then show him to Fetch's quarters."

"Master." Cook bowed his head respectfully, and then with a tug indicated they'd been dismissed.

With no real choice, Jaxx followed. They entered the villa through a side entrance directly into the kitchen. Cook looked him up and down and then unhooked the lead and hung it on a peg by the door. "Don't know your sort. Any trouble with a plant-based diet?"

Jaxx shook his head. "As long as there's protein in it, I'm good."

"Fine." Cook opened a larder and prepared a plate of leafy greens and melon-like fruits, and the poured a mug of something tart and fizzy. "Once you've eaten, I'll show you to your quarters. The master will be busy with his papers and calls for the next little while. Then he'll want to relax. Usually he has a swim or a bath. Sometimes he watches vidfiles." Cook shot Jaxx a pointed look. "If you're the blushing sort, keep it to yourself."

Jaxx frowned with his mouth full of salad until he figured out what sort of vidfiles they were talking about and then he nodded.

Cook took a drink from a mug of his own and then continued. "He likes his companion on hand. He'll talk. You listen. You don't speak unless spoken to. Has he given you a name yet?"

"I'm supposed to be the new 'Fetch'," Jaxx replied. "What does that mean exactly?"

Cook looked at Jaxx like he was simple. "It means, boy, that you fetch. You're the master's errand boy. You go where you're told and you get what he tells you. Understand?"

Cook had a gold collar. Cook was meant to be obeyed. "Got it," Jaxx replied. "Sir."

Cook crossed his arms over his chest and looked pointedly down at Jaxx's platter. "Good. Now hurry up and get that down you. I've got the rest of the house to feed too, you know."

Jaxx dropped his eyes to his plate and replied, "Yes, sir," before he set about clearing it. Once he was finished, he washed his plate and cup under Cook's watchful eye, and then he was led to the dispensary.

Cook opened the door with a key from the ring at his belt. It didn't take long to kit Jaxx out with his livery, personal grooming supplies and bedding. He was indoctrinated in the ways of the household as he was escorted through a long back passageway to a small chamber off the master's suite and then left to himself.

His bed was a low platform, much like the one he'd seen in Moliki's quarters on Telos. There was a cubby for his small supply of clothes, which were mostly meant to be worn outside the compound. As for the personal items from his soldiering days, they were in storage. He'd get them back after he'd earned his silver collar and not before, which was fine by him. There was nothing in his bag he was all that sentimental about, except for his credit chits, and those wouldn't do him much good on Moringa.

He curled up on the bed and shut his eyes, listening to the lapping of waves outside his window. It was nice. It was peaceful. It was easy to drift off, and so he did, until a presence in the room brought him back to a full and quivering state of wakefulness.

"Easy, boy, steady on, it's just me."

Jaxx blinked the room back into focus. Moliki was kneeling next to the bed, all four arms held upward to show that he meant no harm.

Jaxx blew out his breath. Just before he'd snapped back to consciousness he'd had the hazy impression of being softly caressed. It had been … nice and more than a little arousing. There was a heaviness in his groin. A morning erection throbbed hot against his stomach underneath the thin blanket that covered him, except that outside the window it was full night.

"You're settling in. That's good." Citizen Moliki patted Jaxx on the head and then rose to his feet. "You're a good boy. A pretty boy," he said softly and then let himself out of the room, shutting the door and locking it behind him.

Jaxx palmed his erection and had the distinct impression that someone else's hand had aroused him.

***

The next time he awoke it was to the sound of a gong broadcast through speakers and it was barely morning. The estate was run on a series of gongs; telling the servants when to wake, when to eat, when to attend various duties and finally, when they could retire for the night.

Jaxx did a quick series of ablutions in a bathroom that was humanoid friendly, which raised a few questions, but did not dress. He smoothed the coverings over his bed before returning to sit atop it to wait for someone to collect him. Outside the window there were the sounds of activity. People rushing without rushing to and fro, going about their early morning business as the sun rose higher.

Cook appeared dangling Jaxx's lead in one hand. "All right, boy, time you were off for your exercise."

Jaxx walked at heel, two paces to Cook's left, through the back corridors and out to an exercise area with a large bathing pool. Cook unhooked the lead. "All right. In you go. Have a nice swim and then you can have your breakfast. Chop! Chop!"

Cook gave him a none too gentle shove between the shoulder blades, and Jaxx went sprawling into the bracing water. The pool must have been fed straight from the bay, the water he cleared from his hair and mouth was salty. He shook water out of his eyes and glanced around, taking his bearings, and then took a shallow dive, accidentally on purpose kicking up water before power stroking to the opposite side.

He swam, hard, until his lungs started to burn, then he eased off to a more leisurely crawl, flipping over onto his back for a few laps when his muscles started to cramp. He caught sight of their master watching from poolside with a rapt his expression on his broad features. He beckoned, and Jaxx figured maybe exercise time was over as Cook held out a towel which was snatched away from his grasp.

"Stand still," Cook ordered sharply.

Cook handed the towel to Citizen Moliki and he began to ply it, drawing its coarse weave slowly along Jaxx's cheek, over his collar, and down his back, nudging his legs apart to blot the water from the insides of his thighs. He knelt long enough to take care of Jaxx's lower legs, tugging thoughtfully at the coarse hair – so alien compared to the rest of the servants – that covered them, and back up again over his groin.

Jaxx hitched a breath as the towel rode over his cock, which had filled to half-hardness under the slow and sensuous grooming. He fought not to react as a paddle-like hand caressed him beneath the cover of the towel, but he gasped as the sensation of a hundred tiny mouths sucking overwhelmed him for a few brief seconds and then vanished. Abruptly, the towelling off became much more business-like. Cook approached bearing a tray. Jaxx blinked. He'd been so distracted he hadn't noticed that the other servant had withdrawn.

Their master handed over the towel and gave his instructions. "Give him his breakfast, and then take him for a walk in the village. After, you may bring him to my office."

"Very good, sir." Cook bowed his head respectfully. Jaxx stared straight ahead, remembering the first time he'd felt that sucking caress, and wondered if that had been the real reason Fetch had blindfolded him.

***

He was a sensation in the marketplace. Other slaves eyed him discreetly, whilst citizens and their families studied him openly. Cook tugged his leash as Jaxx smiled back at a pretty shopkeeper. "No familiarity unless you're given permission, boy."

Jaxx dropped his eyes and walked two paces ahead, creating a pathway amongst the throng for Cook to pass through as he considered the wares at the various shops and stalls.

Cook tugged on the lead, pulling Jaxx up short. "In here, boy, need to buy something for our master."

The shop looked like it sold spices. It certainly _smelled_ as if it did. Jaxx breathed deeply of the heady air and glanced around at the array of plants and herbs hanging from hooks and stored in long rows of jars.

Cook and the shopkeeper haggled quietly, finally exchanging coins for a tightly wrapped parcel, which Cook tucked into his satchel. "All right, boy, that's that." He tugged on the lead and they were off again, Cook running a steady commentary on who sold what, which collars belonged to which Houses, and what was the fastest way to get to the various places that Jaxx would need to get to when he was allowed out on his own.

They were midway through the bazaar when a citizen approached. Cook gave Jaxx's lead a cautionary tug and then dropped his eyes respectfully. Jaxx did the same. The citizen grabbed Jaxx by the jaw and started to force his head up. Without thinking, Jaxx reacted, pulling sharply away. A mild jolt of electricity surged through his wrists, stinging a warning.

"I apologise, Citizen Notoni," Cook said quickly. "He's a new acquisition, madam. Just starting his training."

"Then he shouldn't be out of the kennel," Citizen Notoni snapped back. "Moliki is too permissive with his pets. The whip and the sting are a slave's best friend."

Cook didn't reply. Jaxx could see his point. If he agreed with the citizen then that meant he was disagreeing with their master. If he disagreed with the citizen then he'd be displaying a contrary attitude and leave himself open for punishment.

Citizen Notoni seemed to approve. She plucked the end of the lead from Cook's hand, slapped it lightly against Jaxx's shoulder, offering a peremptory warning of what he could look forward to if he continued to misbehave, and then began a close inspection, pulling open his jacket to examine the bare chest beneath it and pushing a hand beneath Jaxx's kilt to see what it concealed. "Moliki does bring back the most interesting souvenirs from his travels. Still, better him than me, going out there amongst those … " She shuddered, unable to complete the distasteful thought. "Does this mean there will be one of his ... entertainments soon?"

Jaxx couldn't help but notice how hopeful she sounded.

"I'm sure you'll be the first our master will message, madam," Cook replied. "With your permission?"

Citizen Notoni waved them away with an imperious ripple of her upper tier of arms. Her inspection broke down whatever restraint the other citizens held over themselves. Jaxx was made to stand for close inspection six more times before their shopping tour was done. Each time, long tentacle-like fingers were drawn over his skin, under his clothes and even along the roof of his mouth and against his tongue as the citizens indulged their curiosity.

The last inspection left him trembling as a bold half-grown citizen of undetermined gender ran its suckered hands down Jaxx's sides, over his stomach, and down the front of his kilt.

Cook threw Jaxx one warning glance and then dropped his eyes as the fondling grew more bold. Long fingers slid underneath his kilt and wrapped around his erection, gripped it curiously, and began to slide repeatedly over its length. Jaxx drew a tight breath, feeling himself getting involuntarily more excited with each pass of citizen's hand. His hips jerked, thrusting into the caress. Cook gave him a mild warning shock. Jaxx took another unsteady breath and planted his feet more firmly against the ground as he fought to stay still.

An older male citizen made a sharp, whistling sound. The younger citizen stopped fondling Jaxx abruptly and with one last curious glance, hurried away towards its elder. The crowd that had gathered rapidly dissipated. Cook tugged the lead, indicating they should take a side pathway. When they were clear of the crush of citizens and slaves, Cook gave Jaxx permission to sit. He stuck the end of the lead in Jaxx's mouth. "Stay," he ordered sternly before heading towards a food stall.

Jaxx took a series of shaking breaths as his erection subsided, leaving an uncomfortable ache low in his groin. He was almost all right when Cook returned bearing a bowl between his hands.

"Drink. You've earned that."

Jaxx dropped the end of the lead and drank. He felt immediately calmer in his mind, if not his body. He handed the bowl back to Cook who led him by side paths out of the village towards home.

***

Cook returned Jaxx to his quarters with instructions to put away his clothes and make himself presentable. He stripped and had a quick wash, sponging cool water over his body to rinse away the memories of curious hands stroking his skin.

He had more or less collected himself when Cook returned bearing a covered tray for their master. "Come on, boy, don't want to keep him waiting."

Once again Jaxx was led down the back corridors, but this time he was escorted to a different wing of the house and shown into room with a view of the exercise pool, both above and below the waterline.

"Put the tray in the retiring room," Citizen Moliki said when he glanced up from his papers.

Cook nodded, took the tray through a door at the rear of the room and didn't reappear.

"Come here, boy. Next to me."

Jaxx stood at his master's side and waited. Every so often, he was stroked absently over his stomach or buttocks. Unlike the bold explorations of the citizens in the marketplace, his master's hand was gentle and soothing. Involuntarily, he began to lean into the caresses. When they strayed between his legs to stroke the inside of his thighs and behind his testicles, he pushed his filling erection into his master's fingers.

Moliki put down his stylus and smiled. "Look at you. What a frisky fellow you are!" He ran his open palm boldly over the shaft, pulling the foreskin up over the head and down again. Jaxx's breath hitched, much to his master's evident enjoyment. "Like that? Do you, boy? What about this? Does this feel good?" He placed his mouth against the head and gave it a sucking kiss.

There was a knock at the door. Moliki jumped backwards into his chair, simultaneously pushing Jaxx away from him. Visibly composing himself, he pointed at the door to his retiring room. "Go in there and wait for me. I won't be long."

Jaxx went through and looked around. It seemed to be a sort of entertainment retreat. There was a large vidscreen mounted on the wall with a raised platform stood in front of it. In front of that was a sofa. There were padded foot rests and small tables within easy reach of the sofa, and against one wall was the sort of platform he was beginning to recognise as his designated waiting place. He knelt upon it and tried to ignore the renewed throbbing in his groin, listening instead to the indistinct sounds of conversation carrying over from the office; Moliki talking to Clock and wrapping up the day's business.

Moliki entered just as Jaxx was starting to feel impatient and smiled at his obedient behaviour. "There. All done. No more interruptions for tonight, my frisky boy." He lifted the lid on the tray that Cook provided, inspecting it. "Lots of treats." He picked up a morsel and popped it into his mouth and then carried a second one over to Jaxx, placing it in front of his lips.

Obediently, Jaxx took a savoury slice of something from his master's fingers and chewed.

Moliki moved the tray closer to the sofa, absently flipped the vidscreen on and poured himself a drink from the pitcher. He closed his eyes as he took a sip and then leaned back against the cushions. "Come here, boy, come sit next to me."

Jaxx sat down at attention on the sofa. Moliki shook his head. "I'm sure we can get more comfortable than that!" He offered Jaxx his goblet. "Drink." Jaxx drank the cool and effervescent liquid and began to feel almost immediately less tense. He rested his head against his master's shoulder and when encouraged, swung his legs to rest across his master's broad lap.

On the vidscreen slaves cavorted in the water, swimming around one another and touching one another freely. Jaxx watched his master watch, noticing how his pale grey skin began to dapple the more the couples played. Once again his master's hands began to roam, caressing Jaxx's body absently until he was trembling.

Impudently, Jaxx rubbed his cheek against his master's chest, seeking out the sensitive spots. Moliki stroked his head, pressing Jaxx's mouth against his breastbone. "Frisky fellow," he murmured. "Naughty boy." But he didn't push Jaxx away as he climbed up onto his knees, undid the loose robe his master wore, and began to stroke the dappled skin beneath his fingers with more impunity. Emboldened, he replaced his fingers with his erection, slipping it into the juncture where his master's legs began, then he started to shift his hips slowly from side to side and up and down.

"Clever boy." Moliki grasped Jaxx firmly by the bottom, holding him fast. "Naughty boy," he muttered as he reached between them. "I should give you a sting for being so impudent!" He shifted underneath Jaxx and exposed a long, knobby protuberance that had emerged from between his inner legs. "Look what you've done. Brought me out of my sheath and it's not even breeding season!" Copious amounts of clear fluid seeped from the slit in the end of the bulbous rod. Moliki's eyes twinkled as they met Jaxx's. It was as if they were sharing some great adventure. "Go on, then. Have just a little taste."

Jaxx eyed the thick, irregularly shaped shaft, imagining how it would fill him, if only Moliki would stop being so coy. He took an an experimental lick of the lubricating fluid and didn't mind the briny taste at all. He stretched his lips around the first knob and began to ply his tongue against it.

Moliki trembled all over. He held Jaxx's head and petted it encouragingly, urging him to take more of shaft into his mouth. Below the first knob and above the second, the texture of the skin changed, going from smooth to coarsely ribbed. Jaxx imagined what that would feel like as it was pushed over the sensitive skin underneath his balls or over the bundle of nerves inside his anus and his cock jumped with anticipation. Fluid, spit and his master's natural lubrication, filled his mouth and dripped down his chin. He wiped some of it onto his hand and then reached between his legs to give his cock some relief as he tongued the second bulb.

His jaw ached. Moliki was thick as well as long. If they fucked he'd be filled to bursting, but any soreness afterwards would be a small price. He coated his hand again and began to jerk into it, and then he got an idea. He pulled off completely, panting, and rolled submissively onto his back with his legs spread. Using his fluid-covered hands, he began to play with his hole, pushing his fingertip in and then drawing it out again.

"Frisky boy." Moliki was glassy-eyed with lust. "Naughty boy. Look how worked up I've got you." He rubbed a fingertip over his own slit and then pushed it into Jaxx's anus. Jaxx tilted his hips upward to meet the thrust as the sinuous fingertip explored deeper into the recesses of his body, encouraging his master to be bold. "But what we're doing is naughty. Very naughty. There could be trouble if anyone found out."

Jaxx still wasn't permitted to speak. He put his hand over his mouth to show that he would keep their secret. Moliki pulled away, looking down at Jaxx indecisively, caught between what he so badly desired and local societal mores. He shook his head. "No. No, frisky boy, let's not be impetuous. I think you better go to your bed." He pointed at the low platform.

On all fours, Jaxx crawled the short distance to his platform, showing off his arse as he shuffled along the floor. Once again he assumed a submissive position, on his back with his cock and hole exposed.

Moliki continued to watch him with a hungry expression. He poured a drink, downed it, and then poured a second one. "Such a lovely, frisky, boy." He moved a footstool so that it was close enough to give a good view, but far enough away to keep his distance, and then said, "Give your master a show, frisky boy."

Jaxx scooted so that he could prop his back against the wall. He drew his fingers in and out of his mouth to wet them, and then he began to fuck himself with his hand as his master watched, completely transfixed, as he brought himself to a shattering orgasm. Chest heaving and come-spattered, he took his master's measure.

Moliki's lower limbs were glistening with slippery arousal fluid and although his sex organ was no longer quite as rampant, the knob of it still poked out from between his legs. His skin and breathing still showed him to be in a state of great excitation, the sort that led to impulsive and impetuous actions. He considered his encounter with Fetch. He had been instructed to stay passive, and yet he'd turned the tables to their mutual benefit. He had a sneaking suspicion that's what Moliki meant when he'd called Jaxx 'diverting'. He scrambled off the platform and buried his head between his master's thighs, lapping the viscous juices with broad strokes of his tongue. 

"Bad. Bad boy," Moliki said, as he spread his legs making more room for Jaxx to explore. "You're taking liberties." 

But the sting of the shock bracelets wasn't a threat and the fingers that reached between their bodies to wipe the come from his chest that ended up in Moliki's mouth suggested that the protest was a pretence. He continued to lap, using his hands and fingers to explore the unknown contours and find new sensitivities. The closer he got to the join of legs to body, the more sensitive the flesh under his lips and hands became. He made a feint for the knob at their centre, that was slowly once again becoming prominent, opening his jaw wide and taking a large portion of the shaft down his throat and playing with a frill of short tentacles at its base he hadn't previously noticed, when Moliki finally put his feet down, pushing Jaxx's head away from his lap with obvious reluctance. "No, frisky boy, not yet." He ran a broad hand down Jaxx's chest to console him, lingering over the half hard erection that was beginning to fill again and sighed, "You're a bad boy, and I'm a naughty master," before pulling Jaxx to stand so that he could be more easily sucked off.

***

Out in space, it was third watch on the salvage ship _Hard Luck_. Esme Tern, apprentice mate and most junior member of the crew, was assigned to Observation. She was bored and falling asleep at her post. She had just settled her head comfortably on her folded pseudopods when the proximity alert sounded, frightening her back to a quivering state of wakefulness. She glanced at the readouts, confirmed there was a metallic object floating just off the port bow at the edge of the sensor net, and hailed the Captain.

Half asleep herself, Captain Milox strode onto the command deck. She took one look at the floating tube Esme had displayed on the view-screen and grinned before taking the centre chair.

"Get a traction beam on that pod, then raise the company so that we can haul it aboard. If that's what I think it is, there's profit to be made on this trip yet!" 

She gave Esme a cyclopean wink of praise. There had been rumours of an accident involving a transport ship loaded with ultra high tech bioreplication gear. If the rumours were true, then certain people would be very interested. People who would pay handsomely to obtain the valuable technology.

"Captain?" Esme said. "I'm getting life signs from the pod." She ran the scans again, just to be sure. "Verified." 

"Life signs, eh?" Visions of even more profit began to dance in Captain Milox's head. She knew a person, who knew a person, who could broker an excellent deal. "Then be gentle, Esme, we don't want to damage the contents."

Bristling with excitement, Captain Milox began to mentally compose a communiqué. The wording needed to be exactly right. Because as she well knew, being one herself, there was no honour amongst thieves or mercenaries.

To be continued … 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another off-world slave is sold to the highest bidder whilst Jaxx and his master explore the pleasures of the flesh.

***

The man who thought he was Ianto Jones was deeply confused and more than a little bit perturbed.

His last coherent memory before waking up, stripped naked, in what appeared to be an alien jail cell, was going out to Sunland Park to recover a large rift artefact of unknown origin or function.

There was no sign of Jack. Or of Toshiko or Gwen for that matter amongst the milling prisoners. His Bluetooth, like his clothing, was missing. He was on his own and completely cut off, unable to communicate with anyone, including his jailers or his fellow inmates, because whatever language they were speaking, it wasn't any of the alien languages he was familiar with, and it certainly wasn't English. Feeling defeated, he slapped the bars of the cell, venting some of his frustration, then slumped down upon a bench with his eyes closed, hoping if he wished hard enough, he'd wake up in the Hub and that Jack or even Owen would be looking down on him with concern.

Someone, a guard presumably, barked what he assumed to be an order, based on the reactions of the prisoners around him. There was the sound of shuffling feet as the others rose and lined up.

Ianto weighed the benefits of compliance versus disobedience; whether calling more attention to himself and getting punished would be better than quietly gathering information. With a sigh, he determined that knowledge was power, so he opened his eyes and took his place in line. He could always cause aggro later.

They were herded down the corridor to a bathing room. Actually, to Ianto's eyes, it more closely resembled a car wash minus, fortunately, the industrial-sized rollers and brushes.

Blasted from all sides by warm soapy water then rinsed clean again by jets of fresh, Ianto's temper was near to its boiling point when a guard grabbed him by the wrists and slapped on a pair of dull bronze coloured cuffs and another guard clapped a matching collar around his neck.

He broke away from the guards. An electric shock stung his wrists. The guard rapped the controller at his hip and Ianto grit his teeth against another outburst, lest the guard decide to up the voltage or worse, hit the control that would activate the collar as well.

The door at the opposite end of the room opened. The guard barked another incomprehensible command. Ianto fell in with the other prisoners and warily entered another holding cell.

One by one they were made to stand with their arms held out to their sides and their legs spread wide as a quadruped, the only being in the room not wearing a collar, began a close inspection, running its four hands impersonally over each prisoner and making comments that its assistant took down on an electronic notepad.

When it was Ianto's turn, he stared straight ahead and retreated into his mind, compiling a list of procedures that needed to be revised, especially in regard to rift recovery missions. He made it as far as 'don't get sucked in' when a hand reached between his legs and gave his testicles a none-to-gentle squeeze. Ianto gasped. And then he reacted, instinctively striking out at his assailant.

Pain radiated through his body as the shock collar and cuffs activated. Ianto dropped to his knees, gasping. The four-limbed warden rubbed its knee and dictated a note to its assistant as two guards hauled Ianto to his feet and out of the room. He was deposited, face first, on the stone floor of a new cell and passed out cold.

Bright artificial light dazzled Ianto's eyes and added to an already piercing headache when he regained consciousness. He groaned and clambered to his knees. By the activity around him, it was morning. He groaned again as he pressed his palms to his eyes and his fingertips to his temples, trying to mitigate the dull throbbing that was churning his stomach. In the corner was a bubbling font. The prisoner in the next cell was relieving itself in a recess in the back wall. Confident he wasn't about to slake his thirst in an alien bidet, Ianto bent his lips to the stream of water and drank. Gradually, the headache receded to a manageable level, at least until caffeine withdrawal set in, then he knew he'd be well and truly screwed because the probability of a decent cup of coffee was vanishingly small. He did as his neighbour had and relieved his bladder and bowels in the receptacle provided and then washed his hands and face in the fountain before examining his surroundings further.

Of the dozen prisoners he'd been jailed with, only four remained. None of the others bore any resemblance to the guards or the four-limbed official who'd inspected them. Ianto concluded that on this planet, they were the aliens.

There was the creak of a door hinge and the rattle of metal over stone. A guard trundled down the corridor pushing a cart. He shoved a bowl through a slot at the bottom of the cell and moved on without paying any attention to the prisoners.

When he came to Ianto's cell, Ianto smiled and wished the guard 'good morning'. The guard didn't react, so Ianto tried the Galactic Standard version that Jack had taught him and was blanked a second time. The guard slid a bowl of starchy-looking gruel through the slot and rattled away to feed the remaining prisoners, then he waited a few minutes and came back again to collect the empty bowls.

Several dull hours followed. Ianto composed an entry for his diary: _Jails are Jails, no matter what planet you are on …_ Then he went back to revising the procedure for what one should do if they were riftnapped and cut off from any useful technology. _Keep calm_ was a decent starting point. _Stay polite and out of trouble with the local authorities_ also seemed like a good idea, but somehow he'd managed to run afoul of their good graces without even trying. After that he became stymied. Temporarily defeated, he decided that conservation of energy was a sound principle, so he stretched out on his pallet and tried not to think about worst case scenarios.

***

Of course they weren't put up before a magistrate, fined, and sent on their way with an admonishment to keep their noses clean. Ianto shivered and his stomach lurched around the second provided meal of gruel when he heard the anticipatory mutterings of excited voices coming from outside the anteroom where he and his fellow prisoners were being held. No, not prisoners, he mentally corrected, slaves. They were slaves and they were about to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Frantically, Ianto searched the room for a possible means of escape. A guard noticed his furtive movements and gave him a warning shock before the door opened and they were prodded out onto the block for inspection by potential buyers.

There were two dozen prospective bidders. Ianto counted them automatically, noting that they were all of the quadruped species and that each had a silver or gold collared slave at their side. They made a show of appreciation for the auctioneer's wares, stamping their feet politely as they craned forward for a better view as Ianto and the rest were made to do a twirl, showing off their attributes before they were herded to the side so that bidding could begin on a being whose face and colouring was reminiscent of a sea turtle's.

The bidding was brisk and kept moving along by the auctioneer who expertly played the bidders off one another. Finally, though, potential buyers began to drop out. There was a brief bidding war and then a four-armed signal of capitulation by the bidder at the front.

There was another round of polite feet stamping and the process was repeated for the light blue alien who had been on Ianto's left and a gelatinous non-humanoid that had occupied the cell to his right. Finally, he was prompted to take his place at the centre of the stage.

Before the auctioneer could finish his spiel, presumably some waffle about how he was a healthy, spirited specimen, strong of wind and limb, an imperious voice called out a bid.

The other potential buyers made a low ooing sound and then they jumped into the fray. Ianto didn't know if this was standard operating procedures, and it was the behaviour of eager people who wanted to buy _something_ lest their day be a disappointment, or if the auctioneer had saved the best for last, but he was strangely mollified by the enthusiasm that his turn on the block generated and the disappointed noises the other bidders made as the auction was declared closed. Resisting the urge to take a bow, Ianto let himself be escorted off the platform without a struggle, hoping that the deferential way his new master's agent was being treated meant that he was entering a house of refinement where the servants were treated with respect and dignity. Perhaps then his new master or mistress would listen sympathetically to his plight and offer what assistance they could to help send him home.

Ianto's optimism deflated rapidly as, under the watchful eyes of servants armed with what looked like cattle prods, his arms and legs were shackled with short-chained manacles and he was herded into a cage that looked alarmingly like a large dog carrier for his trip home.

***

It took Jaxx's master almost a week to get over the guilts. During that time Jaxx was kept busy by Cook in the kitchen or supervised closely by Clock as he handled menial errands and clerical chores while their master locked himself away on the opposite side of the villa with his account books. He was almost starting to think he'd been too aggressive when one night, late, after a long day of helping in the kitchen, he woke from an increasingly erotic dream to find the sheets pulled back, laying his skin bare for inspection, and his master leaning over the bed. Before Jaxx could speak, fingers were placed over his mouth cautioning him to silence.

Jaxx nodded that he understood.

Moliki placed his palm lightly against Jaxx's chest, as if he knew he shouldn't, but he just couldn't resist the temptation any longer. Very tentatively, almost shyly, he grazed his fingertips over Jaxx's skin.

Jaxx closed his eyes and pushed up into the caress, encouraging his master to be bold. A second hand joined the first, stroking and touching Jaxx's cheek, neck and chest with increasing confidence. Then a third rode over his belly and a fourth crept between his legs.

Moliki made a strangled sound, as if wanted to groan loudly and give voice to his lust, but he was afraid that someone might hear, although the rest of the servants had long been dismissed to their beds. "My lovely boy," he murmured. "Thinking of you has been driving me to distraction." He began to work Jaxx's foreskin up and over his shaft with long fingers. "So delicious to touch. Even better to taste. Let me have a taste, my lovely boy."

Jaxx held out his arms, encouraging his master to let go of his inhibitions. Emboldened, Moliki straddled Jaxx's body and began to kiss and to suck where his fingers had lovingly petted and caressed, working his way down over Jaxx's belly, dipping his tongue in the umbilicus, which caused Jaxx to shudder to his master's delight, until he was poised over the true object of his desire.

The last of Moliki's restraint gave way and he dipped his head to Jaxx's groin and took him into his mouth. Teased as he had been, Jaxx moaned in open-mouthed pleasure. Moliki, still fearful of detection, stuffed his fingers into Jaxx's mouth for him to suck.

Fingers were good, but what he really wanted was brushing against his knee. Jaxx shifted under Moliki and trapped his master's erection between his legs.

"My frisky boy." Moliki gave Jaxx's balls another swipe of his tongue and then pulled off of him entirely. "You really want to please your master, don't you?"

Jaxx leaned up and propped himself on his elbows, the better to make his point. He nodded and then got to his knees before climbing the length of the bed to embrace Moliki around the waist, holding him in place as he reached between his legs and gently stroked the unsheathed erection at their centre. He tickled the rubbery little protrusions, causing his master to gasp and clutch him close. "Lay down, master," he whispered, "and let me pleasure you."

He helped Moliki down onto his back and then straddled him. His master's twin-bulbed erection was already slick with arousal and Jaxx's cock was wet with spit, which made matters easier to arrange. He stretched his foreskin to its limit, creating a hollow, and then sheathed his master's bulbous head, holding both erections trapped in his fist. With his other hand he began to work their joined shafts.

"Clever boy," Moliki moaned. He wrapped his hands around Jaxx's arse and shoulders, anchoring him close.

Under his palm, their joined cocks throbbed. As worked up as he was, Jaxx knew he couldn't last, because the sensation of his master's slick fluids under his foreskin combined with the friction of his palm was amazing. But he tried to hold out for as long as he could thinking of dull things like close order drilling and monthly kit inspections.

When it got to be too much and his hand stuttered, Moliki took over, and Jaxx was free to close his eyes and let the delicious sensations completely overwhelm him. He came. With nowhere to go, ejaculate pumped out of him, ballooning the already stretched foreskin and bathing them in luscious heat which they shared rapturously before Jaxx was forced to pull away.

"Good boy. Clever boy," Moliki murmured as he mouthed weak kisses against Jaxx's skin. "For that you've earned a treat." He took his time licking Jaxx clean, nuzzling him between the legs until he was hard again, and then sucking him off to a less cataclysmic orgasm before he crept out of the room and locked the door behind him.

***

"Hello. My name is Ianto Jones, and I am not a cocker spaniel."

Ianto's cheery wave was met with the same blank stare he received every morning. Trainer motioned to the shock controller, which was the signal that Ianto had better get down on his knees double quick time so that his lead could be attached, or else.

There was a difference between being rebellious and being stupid and he'd learned to pick his battles as a teenager. A shock through the cuffs stung. A shock through the neck if the voltage was high enough could kill him. Content to bide his time until a better opportunity arose, Ianto knelt.

A tug on the lead was followed by Trainer's second command and the first word of Ianto's new vocabulary. "Come."

He fell into step two paces behind and followed Trainer out of the slave quarters.

Each day they followed the same routine. He was fed on his own, after which he was allowed ten minutes in the toilets to take care of business. Ablutions completed, it was off to the training room for a morning of being put through his paces. Like any good pet, he had been taught to sit, stay and come on command. He'd also been taught the words for 'lie down' and 'roll over', which he found worrying, before they'd moved on to simple household chores like sweeping floors and washing dishes. Even more worrying, at the rate he was picking up new words it'd be a year before he'd be able to make intelligible conversation. If he couldn't make himself understood then there would be no way of enlisting help if he was ever granted an audience with his master.

From the baskets of what appeared to be fruits and vegetables and other comestibles arranged on the table, it appeared that the lesson of the day was going to be in culinary basics. Ianto sighed as Trainer picked up a pink spotted something the size of an apple, and called it a 'tuba'. Dutifully, he repeated the word and stored it away, adding to his pitifully small vocabulary, before they moved on to 'zonkas', 'trillin' and 'buds'.

By the time he was released for his exercise period, Ianto had a dull headache. He let Trainer lead the way, not really paying much attention to where they were going. To his surprise, when he did tune back in after filing the names of the different foods he'd been shown and numbers up to ten into the correct spots in his memory, he realised that instead of going to the pool for exercise as they usually did, Trainer had led him to an extension off the main villa.

Inside, a dozen milling slaves waited under the supervision of three more trustees, each of whom bore a lash in addition to a cuff controller. They abruptly quieted when Trainer appeared and dropped respectfully to their knees in ranks of three. Ianto was led to a spot in the second row and told to drop.

He knelt with the rest, surreptitiously studying the other slaves and his surroundings. The house slaves were a homogeneous group of coral-colour bipedal beings with bald scalps and finely scaled skin. Their hands had long fingers. Their feet weren't wedge-shaped enough to be flipper-like, but they were close. Under their black collars and cuffs – which marked the slaves as newcomers just as he was – there were fine, slightly darker striations. He still couldn't differentiate male from female because there didn't seem to be any obvious external differences, which was why he was such an object of interest. Every one he'd come into contact with stared openly. Evidently humans or humanoid species were a novelty in this part of space.

As for the room they were kneeling in, its purpose wasn't immediately clear. There was a bathing pool at its centre. Old fashioned-looking fainting couches and low tables were arranged around the walls. In their corner of the room, padded mats had been laid on the floor. Next to them was a table on which a variety of small containers and other objects were arranged, the purpose of which couldn't immediately be discerned.

Trainer began to speak. Ianto couldn't understand a word, but the others could and whatever was being said was making them distinctly uncomfortable. Uneasily they shifted on their knees, until Trainer pointed at two slaves and ordered them to come to the front of the class. More instructions were given. The two slaves looked uneasily at each other and then they began to touch each other tentatively, stroking one another's faces and tickling the webbing between each other's fingers.

Ianto began to get an roiling feeling in his stomach as he thought back to the debauched days of the Romans, as depicted by cable television. Slaves pleasured one another for their masters' amusement. Ianto dropped his eyes away from the pair Trainer was coaching, mortified for them all.

One of the guards noticed. A mild shock stung Ianto through the wrists, making his hands and arms tingle. He swallowed his outrage and dutifully raised his head. One slave had moved behind the other. As they rubbed chest to back it became obvious that both were becoming stimulated despite their embarrassment, if darkening colour and increased respirations were reliable indicators of sexual excitement.

Trainer used the word 'good' and 'sit', then tugged on Ianto's lead and gave the order to 'come'.

Swallowing nervously, Ianto rose, wondering if this was the hill he wanted to die on and decided it probably wasn't. It wasn't uncommon under these sorts of circumstances for disobedience by one to mean punishment for all, and those around him had already been humiliated. Even though his hands were shaking and his heart was trip-hammering, he took his place at the front, standing stiffly at attention as another slave was called to attend.

Trainer said something to Ianto's designated partner that Ianto interpreted as 'get on with it' and so he filed the phrase away. Hesitant hands glided over his body, and long fingers tugged experimentally at his chest hair and nipples. Figuring what was soonest commenced was also soonest done, Ianto also began to explore, using what he'd learned in the brief time he'd watched the other couple perform. He started to move to his partner's back, but Trainer ordered him to stay. Their positions were reversed and Trainer began to grope Ianto between the legs, fumbling his testicles inexpertly. But a fumble was a fumble and the hands that played with his nipples didn't feel half bad. Ianto felt himself harden and his palm dropped without conscious thought to his cock.

He recalled Jack's way of spinning stories; how he would grin and his eyes would twinkle as he related one outlandish detail after another. If their positions were reversed, he'd tell the tale of being inducted into an alien harem and how he wrapped its keeper around his little finger with a wink and a smile.

Put like that, the debasing training didn't seem so bad. In fact, it almost seemed like fun. Ianto was at heart a pragmatist and not afraid to use the tools at his disposal to achieve his means. It wasn't the first time he'd used his body to get what he wanted, and what he wanted most of all was to curry enough favour with those in charge to get him home. As another pair of hands pulled his mouth close for a kiss, he decided that if Jack could coolly seduce his executioners, then putting on a sex show for horny aliens should be a piece of cake.

Trainer gestured for another slave to come forward and kneel. Ianto guided the head of his cock to the slave's mouth and closed his eyes as he was sucked from the front and rubbed from behind and decided on the balance, it was a better way to spend his afternoon then learning the difference between 'zonkas' and 'buds'.

***

The house servants had been dismissed for the day, sent down to frolic on the beach as a treat, leaving the house unattended. Jaxx had stayed behind to look after their master. In reality, he was the one about to be looked after. They were in the retiring room with the doors locked. On the platform below the vidscreen a small table with a cloth covered tray was set up next to the long, low, padded table that often found its way centre stage when Moliki provided live entertainment for his guests.

"Now my frisky boy, here's the treat I promised you." Moliki pulled the cloth off the tray. On it rested a dildo modelled on his own genitals. It was attached by hoses to a pair of jars: one filled with viscous lubricant and in the other tiny eels glided serenely. "You've had some experience with a smaller version of this toy and you did well," Moliki said. "But before I give you what we both want you to have, I need you to be fully prepared so you're not accidentally injured."

Jaxx studied the writhing eels with a frown. Moliki chuckled at his reaction. "Don't worry, my lovely boy. They won't hurt you. In fact, I think you'll find them quite stimulating. Now come take your place on the table so that I can have a little lick." He patted the table and Jaxx climbed up onto it, lying with his bottom close to the edge and his legs spread wide. Without any preliminary fondling, Moliki closed his mouth around Jaxx's flaccid cock, sucking and tonguing it enthusiastically until Jaxx started to flex his hips, fucking into his master's mouth. Gently, Moliki pulled away. "Now give me a little tickle."

Using just his fingertips, Jaxx reached over and wiggled his fingers against the carpet of rubbery fringe that guarded his master's sheath until the bulbous head began to emerge. Then he leaned over far enough to take it into his mouth, sucking until the first flow of juices began to seep out of it. Once again, he was gently pushed away. Moliki moved to the end of the table, wet his fingertips with the moisture Jaxx had raised, and began to finger Jaxx until his sphincter muscle relaxed. Then he leaned down to give Jaxx's cock another sucking kiss. "So eager, aren't you, my lovely boy. You're all ready for your treat."

Jaxx rolled his hips up off the table to show how ready he was. Moliki removed his fingers and inserted the knobbed head of the dildo. At first, the muscles resisted its intrusion, and then they relaxed around it and it slipped easily inside. Moliki gave Jaxx time to adjust to its girth, distracting him from any pain by playing with his cock, stretching the foreskin over the head and then slipping a long finger down inside it until he had Jaxx squirming with enjoyment.

Slowly, Moliki slid the dildo in deeper until the second bulb disappeared, watching Jaxx's face closely for any sign that he was moving too quickly or that the intrusion into his body was too much. "Good boy. Luscious boy. I can't wait to play back the vid and show you how delicious you look splayed out so openly." Carefully placed cameras were capturing the every gasp and sigh, every squirm of Jaxx's hips and look of raw lust for posterity. "How I want to rub against you, but I'm going to deny myself … at least until later."

He hit the switches controlling the pumps, sending the liquid oozing out of pores built into the dildo's skin. The tiny eels were sent shooting into a balloon in the interior where they bounced madly against the supple walls in a bid to escape. The combination of the seeping lubricant and the wiggling sea creatures stimulated every nerve ending they came in contact with, dissolving the pain from being over-stretched and sending Jaxx arching off the table as he orgasmed.

But the first was not the last. As soon as the wave of pleasure crested and broke, a new one found its momentum and crashed over him. Unable to contain himself, Moliki prostrated himself over Jaxx's body, holding him down until he cried out that he couldn't take it any more, his eyes rolled back into their sockets, and he blacked out.

When he came back to himself, Moliki had removed the dildo and was in the processes of rubbing something cool and soothing into his skin. When he saw that Jaxx was reviving, he helped him sit up and held a cup to his lips so that he could drink. "There you go, my lovely boy, did you enjoy your treat?" Jaxx nodded weakly, too spent to do more. For once in his life he was completely, utterly, sexually exhausted.

Moliki kissed his brow. "My lovely, frisky boy. You did very well. Very well indeed. Master is very proud of you." Jaxx tilted his head up and offered his mouth for a kiss that was returned very gently before Moliki mounted the table and began to pleasure himself against Jaxx , murmuring soft endearments as he gave into his lust.

***

"I have become a fuck toy," Ianto said softly so as not to disturb those trying to sleep around him. "And it sucks."

Across the room, in the soft blackness that enveloped the trainees' quarters, he heard someone sobbing. It wasn't an uncommon sound at night. It was the only time it was safe to give into their despair.

He hurt, body and soul. The injuries to his flesh would heal in due course. But experience had taught him that those to his spirit would linger until he had time to build them into a new narrative, which required framing them in a new context. The only trouble was, in his current surroundings, the only thing likely to give him a different perspective were more degradations and further humiliation.

As far as he could make out, he was at the bottom of the slave hierarchy. Not just because he was new and untrained and was yet to earn a specialist role in the household, but because he was from off-world.

The other slaves were expected to service their masters and mistresses in any capacity that was demanded of them. He was also expected to put out. But rather than a general entertainment, sex with him was a perverse act, something to add extra spice to the show. The way watching a porn performer coupling with an animal would be.

Uneasily Ianto shifted on his pallet. As sore as he was, the thin mattress was no padding at all under legs that were stiff from kneeling and a body that ached from being held for extended lengths of time in awkward positions. His arse hurt from being penetrated repeatedly by inexpert fingers, because Trainer had once seen a slave with similar anatomy being used that way and it had amused the audience.

Rolling over wasn't an option either. His front hurt almost as badly as his backside did. His cock ached from being forced to stand long past his normal endurance. Not even the unfortunate experiment with Viagra had caused him so much pain.

He was in Hell and there was no escape. At least none he could affect on his own. Not when the cuffs and collars marked him as a slave of the House of Notoni and no one dared cross his mistress.

If he was to be rescued then help would have to come from outside. From the planetary government, if he ever became intelligible enough to be granted an audience. Or from another off-worlder.

Ianto took comfort from the idea that Jack would be frantic with worry and that he'd throw everything at his disposal into tracing the pathway the rift corridor had taken. He was sure Toshiko had her monitors running during the recovery mission. She'd have gathered at least some telemetry to feed into the new computer models she'd been experimenting with. And once they had a location then Jack would call the Doctor.

The Doctor, in his improbable blue box, would materialise out of nowhere and Jack would come striding out, coat billowing behind him. He'd kick arse and take names until he showed up at the villa where he'd tell the mistress of the house exactly what she could do with her cuffs and collars. And then, when he finally got to the slave quarters, he'd sweep Ianto into a hug straight out of the cheesiest romance novel ever written to prove that neither of them was imagining, and it would be totally worth the embarrassment, because it would mean that he would be going home.

But only if he kept it together, hung on, and gave Jack time to find him.

Ianto shut his eyes. He visualised the TARDIS as clearly as he could and then he imagined Jack down to the scent of his sweat at the end of a long day. 

"I'm here, Jack," Ianto whispered. "Come and get me."

***

Despite his intended destination, Jaxx was feeling good about life. It was a bright, beautiful day. He'd earned his silver collar and was allowed to ramble around on his own, as long as he had at least a nominal reason to be doing so, and his day job, such as it was, was soft and mostly entailed running errands for his master.

And unlike a lot of Exes, he had a full belly and a soft bed to fall into at the end of the day, even if the bed did sit centimetres off the floor instead of the conventional half metre he was used to. And last, but certainly not least, he had often fantastic sex on a regular basis with a variety of interesting partners – including his master, even if they did have to be painfully discreet about it – because sex with off-world slaves and indentured servants was a punishable offence. Although, as it turned out, watching those same slaves and indentured servants was not. The citizens indulged their voyeurism kink on a regular basis, issuing invitations for casual gatherings on the flimsiest of excuses if it meant they could bring their exotic favourites along to provide the entertainment.

He was travelling to the home of the one citizen that he actively loathed. Citizen Notoni hadn't impressed him the day they'd first met in the marketplace, and subsequent visits to her estate as he conducted his master's business hadn't improved his opinion one jot. Compared to the other citizens of his acquaintance, she was overly critical, expecting her slaves to anticipate her needs before she knew them, and she was quick to exact harsh punishment against those that failed to meet her unfailingly high standards. Her treatment of him that first day in the marketplace had been typical. Slaves were chattel and treated as such. But he had been someone else's property and yet she'd shown zero compunction about getting grabby and handling him roughly, which pretty much summed up her character: she was greedy and driven by avarice.

Moliki and Notoni were generally rivals. However occasionally their interests aligned. When they did, in public, they put on a united front. But behind the scenes, they were ruthless with one another, negotiating to the most infinitesimal detail the contracts under which they operated; Moliki to first and foremost protect his reputation, and Notoni to make sure she got every last credit chit she thought she had coming to her.

At the gate to the Notoni Estate a slave glanced at Jaxx's collar and made a note in the log book that he was there to conduct his master's business. At the touch of a button a page appeared to escort the way to the villa, even though Jaxx had made the trip many times and knew the way blindfolded to the office of Notoni's Clock.

Jaxx didn't mind. A companion gave him the opportunity to hear the unedited version of what Citizen Notoni was getting up to because dissatisfied slaves got their own back any way they could. The gossip he picked up on his rounds was often eye-popping and occasionally useful.

At the door to Clock's office, Jaxx winked at his escort as they parted and watched in satisfaction as she blushed. She'd let it slip that her mistress was planning a party and they all knew what that meant.

He did, but only by reputation. Even by Moliki's licentious standards, Notoni was hedonistic, and her notions about entertainment were considered extreme, even in a society given to excesses.

As the escort was about to round the corner, she was forced to dodge around a second slave bearing a large tray. Jaxx took a double take. Tall, bearded – which was unusual on a planet full of hairless people – with pale skin and curling brown hair; he was definitely human. He wore the black collar and cuffs of a trainee.

Jaxx felt his heart skip a beat and his chest constrict as the man bowed his head and took a breath, allowing his bland mask to fall away.

Pain, the sort of deep despair Jaxx had once known too well, laid bare across his features before, very resolutely, he composed himself once more and assumed an appropriately servile expression. The door he stood before opened and he was admitted. Before Jaxx could react, the slave was gone and Clock was standing in front of him, impatiently ushering him inside.

"Who was that?" Jaxx asked without thinking.

Clock looked down the empty corridor. "Who was who?"

Jaxx shook his head. He could cause trouble for the other slave by showing overt interest. "Nobody."

Clock began to rattle on about contracts. His mind still firmly on the other slave, Jaxx dug them out of his satchel and handed the latest round of draft documents over, wondering if he would get another glimpse of the only other human he'd set eyes on since arriving on Moringa.

To be continued … 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ianto learns the harsh realities of being a slave, but he also gets his hopes raised when Jaxx and Moliki are invited to a gala at Citizen Notoni's.
> 
> *Contains sexual violence and the inappropriate use of sea animals.*

***

Even though none of the trainees were primarily body slaves, Trainer seemed determined to see they received a thorough education in the physical arts. He'd even slipped in some safer sex tips; like how to read a citizen's mood and body language to defuse potentially dangerous situations, and how to fake both pain and pleasure to lessen wear and tear on the body. There'd also been a unit on chemical aids: aphrodisiacs, mood enhancers, and potions to increase or dull sensitivity. He was good at his job, and he wanted his students to be too, because keeping the citizens happy was important to the general welfare of all slaves.

The lesson for the day was performing oral pleasure: male. Or as Ianto noted it in his mental journal: How to Suck a Citizen's Dick. Citizens willing to act as guinea pigs were in short supply, so Trainer had fitted half the students with strap-on dildos for the rest of them to practice on. On the balance, Ianto thought this was a sound procedure. Especially since the strap-on had a hollow centre, the upper third of which was filled with something called benola sap, a viscous substance that closely resembled the texture and consistency of male arousal secretions. The base was also large enough to protect a less generously endowed human's genitals, which meant there was a fair chance that at least one portion of his anatomy would escape punishment during the lesson.

His designated partner for the day was a slave named 'Petal' whose primary duty was to keep the villa's elaborate floral displays well tended. She knelt at his feet, eyeing the dildo with a tremulous expression.

Ianto didn't blame her. As used as he was to giving blow jobs, he knew he'd have to work at relaxing his throat to take down the long, thick, instrument without choking or accidentally raking his teeth against its surface. He smiled at her encouragingly and tilted the shaft so that it was at a less difficult angle for her to suck. Hesitantly, Petal wrapped her hands around the base of the shaft and swiped her tongue over the head.

Trainer circulated. He was a good, patient, teacher and it was clear that he'd learned some of the tips he was passing along the hard way, on his knees before a master who hadn't had the time or inclination to be pleasured by an incompetent. Ianto watched closely, incorporating the new techniques into his repertoire.

They were on the verge of swapping places after a short break when a page came running in and breathlessly whispered a message to Trainer. He frowned and abruptly called the class to order. Just as they formed ranks and stood to, Citizen Notoni swept imperiously through the doorway. In her wake, two bearers struggled under the weight of a large creature wrapped in a fisherman's net. They went straight to the pool and unceremoniously dumped their burden into the pool and then the citizen's personal attendant, the majordomo of the estate whose title was 'Clock', flipped on the vidscreen.

A massive sea creature, easily four metres long, that resembled a gigantic squid with an extra fringe of fine cilia around its beak, settled at the bottom of the pool. Its many tentacles undulated gently.

There was a collective gasp from the native slaves. Even Trainer looked shocked. It wasn't unusual to see slaves drop their impassive masks in private moments, but Ianto had never seen anybody, especially a senior ranked slave like Trainer, show negative emotions in front of Citizen Notoni. He shot a sharp look at Clock, who gave him a tiny but baleful head shake in return. Trainer disregarded the other slave's admonishment. He strode to their mistress's side and although he kept his eyes lowered and his tone respectful, it was plain he was unhappy.

Whatever his objections were, they were overridden. Citizen Notoni pushed rudely past Trainer and began a close inspection of his students, running her hands freely over their bodies. When she got to him, Ianto kept his eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance and tuned out, ignoring the casual molestation. She seemed to find his passivity acceptable and moved onto Petal, who broke out into an attack of tremors.

"You. Go to the pool."

Obediently Petal bobbed her head and with a single backwards glance at Ianto, she obeyed her mistress's command.

Trainer shot a desperate look at his pupil and then he launched into a new volley of objections. Citizen Notoni raised her lash and brought it down hard across Trainer's face and then again over his bowed shoulders.

Everyone, trainees, bearers and attendants froze, not even daring to breathe less they further provoke their mistress, and then there was a flurry of motion as one of the bearers arranged a fainting couch in front of the vidscreen and Trainer rose slowly to his feet to join Petal poolside. He put his arm around her shoulders, whispered something, and then shoved her into the water with an almighty splash.

The monster rose to investigate, attracted by the sudden disturbance in the water. Petal plastered her body against the side of the pool, her rapidly opening and closing gills the only symptom of her panic.

Citizen Notoni settled comfortably on the fainting couch watching with a rapt expression as the squid did a slow-motion somersault and drifted to the opposite side of the pool as if it had lost interest. Cautiously, Petal began to swim laps, as she'd evidently been instructed to, moving just under the surface of the water and using an economy of motion so as not to attract attention. Utterly serene, the squid settled to the bottom of the pool as its audience grew increasingly more tense. 

The attack, when it came, was as abrupt as it was shocking. The squid launched itself off the bottom in a flurry of tentacles and bubbles. It grabbed Petal around the waist and heaved her bodily from the water.

The pair broke the surface and the squid arced high over the pool before diving deep again. It held Petal tight against its body as she struggled futilely in its grasp, forcing her legs apart and shoving its mating arm into her cloaca.

Citizen Notoni became visibly excited as Petal's struggles intensified. Her colouring became mottled. Her breathing rapid. Her limbs undulated, mimicking the squid's as if they were one entity as Petal gradually went limp. The squid jerked backwards, yanking its arms free. Petal's body drifted motionless until it settled at the bottom.

"Trainer, attend." A second fainting couch was hastily brought forward and arranged next to the first. On shock-stiffened legs, Trainer mechanically donned one of the harnesses and lay down upon it with his legs spread open. Citizen Notoni mounted him, taking her pleasure as if there were no witnesses.

But then again, Ianto thought bitterly as he looked at his barely breathing fellow slave and the squid swimming placidly above her body, they were nothing; nonentities to be used and discarded as their betters saw fit.

Citizen Notoni reached her climax, dismounted Trainer, and straightened her clothing with the assistance of Clock. She gave the vidscreen a backwards glance and frowned at it as if she was finally considering Trainer's impassioned arguments before walking out with her retinue close at her heels.

Mad with suppressed adrenaline and anger, Ianto broke for the pool and dove straight for the bottom, hoping the squid had a long enough refractory period that it wouldn't be in a hurry for a new conquest. He gathered Petal up and brought her to the surface where the others waited to bear her away to Healer. Trainer watched, sorrowfully, as tears mixed with blood streamed down his haunted face.

***

Jaxx followed at his master's heels. He was feeling mellow and content after a long afternoon at the estate of Moliki's spawn sister and primary business partner Citizen Taliki. After the pair had hammered out a new strategy for assuming an even greater share of the Crystal Casino's ancillary business interests, including the specialist escort trade, they had settled down to enjoy a light lunch while Jaxx and the cousin's very non-humanoid shaped pet provided the entertainment.

It wasn't the best sex he'd ever had, but 'Bubbles' as she'd been dubbed by her mistress, had an egg receptacle that had felt good to thrust into, and although Moliki had managed to control his more overt signs of sexual arousal, it was pretty obvious – to Jaxx anyway – that no more business would be conducted once they returned to the estate and the rest of the servants had been dismissed.

A messenger wearing the collar and livery of the House of Notoni passed them as they were about to enter the main gate and Jaxx thought of the mysterious slave he'd caught the brief glimpse of. Even though he'd been to the other estate several times since then, he hadn't struck lucky. If the other slaves he'd tried to worm information out of hadn't confirmed his existence, Jaxx would have thought he'd been smitten by a waking dream.

Clock met them at the door as they entered the foyer. "This just arrived for you, sir." He handed over an ornately addressed envelope.

Moliki broke the seal and glanced at the document. His egg-shaped face split open as he smiled, clearly unable to to contain his delight. "A treat for us both, lovely boy. Notoni is having a gala!"

Jaxx grinned back as plans began to hatch in his brain. If all stops were to be pulled, as his master seemed to think, then every slave on the estate would be available to the guests. There would be no better opportunity to finally meet the stranger who had fired his imagination.

Clock was still waiting for instructions. With an effort, Moliki pulled himself out of his head and nodded at his majordomo. "Thank you, Clock. Convey my acceptance. Also, tell Cook that Fetch will collect my tray later, after I've had a bath and a nap. I won't need either of you again this evening." He gave Jaxx a brisk nod. "Come, Fetch. Attend."

Jaxx bit the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning openly. _Bath time_ was always fun. Especially when Moliki gave him _that_ look behind Clock's back.

***

Freshly washed and dressed in the basic house livery, Ianto turned out to the auxiliary kitchen along with half a dozen other slaves. That he had been ordered into plain clothes, rather than the more gaudy costumes some of his fellow slaves had been assigned, was something of a relief. It meant that there was a possibility that he might remain behind the scenes working in the kitchen rather than being put to use for the guests' entertainment.

The room where they'd done their pleasure training had been transformed into a proper backdrop for a bacchanalia. It had been lit with primitive looking oil torches that burned with bright smokeless flames so that not a detail of the many entertainments would be missed. They'd spent hours decorating the rafters and support columns with garlands of headily-scented flowers and sent even more sweet scented blossoms floating across the surface of the pool.

A buffet of finger foods was to be set out on long tables. Drinks would be served by constantly circulating cup bearers. Some of his fellow trainees had been selected to be painted and costumed, their bodies arranged in a series of erotic tableaux. Still others were drafted to swell the ranks of the body slaves, to be used by the guests as they wished, and had been instructed to stand at attention, their eyes downcast in submission, displaying their naked charms for all to see.

Cook and Clock were conferring, not quite panicking as they dealt with a last minute crisis. The guests had already started to arrive. Every few minutes there was another blast of the welcoming horn, announcing the arrival of members of yet another great house.

"Twenty-seven." Ianto snapped to attention and looked up as Cook beckoned him forward. The actual name he'd been given was 'Hands'. But it was a common name, given to many of the slaves who had no specific purpose other than to be useful. "Strip. Then up."

Ianto frowned in confusion, thinking he must have missed something or hadn't understood, even though 'up' was one of the first words he'd learnt. He pointed at his chest and then at the table, just to be sure he'd heard correctly.

Clock scowled at Ianto's time wasting. She sent a mild shock through his wrists and repeated the command.

Still uncertain as to what exactly they had in mind, Ianto stripped, folding his clothes carefully and handing them off to another slave before getting onto the table.

Cook put a hand on his chest and pushed him down flat and then she gestured to one of her assistants to bring over a tray of stuffed quava leaves. With a harried frown, she began to arrange them over Ianto's stomach.

"You can't be serious." Ianto tried to sit up. Cook pushed him down firmly and glared a warning at him to keep still.

Ianto's overstretched patience finally broke. He sat up, sending the little green packets of grain and herbs rolling across the floor. "I am Ianto Jones," he stated firmly. "I am many things, but an hors d'oeuvre tray is _not_ one of them."

Ianto wasn't the only one working on frayed nerves. Neither Cook nor Clock were in the mood for dissension within the ranks. They both hit their belt controllers at the same time.

Electric current shot through Ianto's body. He stiffened and then went down, hanging on just long enough to feel himself being lifted off the floor and carried, unceremoniously, out of the busy prep area before he lost consciousness completely.

***

By the time they arrived, the party was just shifting into high gear. Jaxx glanced around at the elaborate decorations and at the many guests, most of whom had their favourites in tow, nearly all of which had been decked out in new finery for the occasion just as he had.

Jaxx had been presented with a new sea-blue jacket and kilt cut in a barely there fashion. It clung to his chest and thighs, enhancing his assets without being overly conspicuous or tacky, at least that's what Moliki said as he ran his hand underneath the kilt and gave Jaxx's bottom a squeeze.

It appeared no expense had been spared. The large open space had been filled with delights to stimulate all the senses and arouse even the most jaded connoisseur of indulgences. Everywhere he looked there was something that begged to be examined more closely. To be touched or tasted, or even just admired for its exquisite attention to detail.

There were slaves milling everywhere. Some, in the Notoni house livery, were serving drinks. Some lined up along one wall, standing at respectful attention, fully on display for the gratification of the openly leering guests. A triad was having sex on a raised dais, performing for an amused audience. On another dais, a slave was bound and kneeling. Guests took turns using thick stalks of rough-leafed seaweed to whip him into an erotic frenzy. A few guests were enjoying the naked slaves in the pool, watching their underwater cavorting on a prominently placed vidscreen. Others were gathered around a tube-shaped tank where slaves writhed as they were tickled by scores of the same variety of tiny eels Moloki had used to animate the dildo. 

But no matter where he looked: at the servers, the performers, the slaves on call, Jaxx didn't see the one face he'd hoped to pick out of the crowd. Disappointed, he let Moliki draw his attention to the buffet where a number of citizens leaned over the serving tables. "Come on, lovely boy, lets have a little treat."

Jaxx took a double take as he was led through the milling guests to the laden tables. Lying prone on each was a slave whose body had been covered with bite-sized portions of food. Guests were making a game of nibbling morsels directly off the slaves' skin. As they drew closer to the most denuded slave, Jaxx could see that she was deeply flushed, betraying her level of arousal. She was fighting to keep completely still as lips and tongues deliberately overshot their marks and pushed her even closer to the edge.

"Whoever makes her climax without touching the obvious places wins," Moliki explained. "It's great fun."

Jaxx could see his point. But the game was just for citizens, so he swiped a snack from a less provocative serving tray and went to go mingle with some of his more affectionate friends until they announced that the main entertainment was about to begin.

***

When he came back to himself, Ianto was lying on a litter. Chains had been attached to his wrist cuffs and his feet had been manacled. Two slaves entered the room. Their bodies had been elaborately painted with great swirls of black and gold, and pieces of seaweed had been woven into shining green capes that draped down their backs. They picked up the litter and bore it between them into the main hall.

The audience stamped their feet at his arrival and they stamped louder as he was deposited on a low table ornamented with curving head and foot boards. His arms and legs were forced to splay outward and then the cuffs around his wrists and ankles were tied securely, leaving him open and exposed.

He struggled ineffectually against his bonds as Trainer smeared something slick over his chest and belly and then over and between his thighs. A second something was dripped liberally over his cock and arse. He watched as Trainer coated his finger with a large dollop of a milky substance. Ianto gasped as it was applied liberally to the inside of his anus.

Trainer was gentle with his ministrations, trying to be as sensual as possible, to tease and arouse both Ianto and their audience. He pleaded with his eyes for Ianto to be calm and relax. To submit rather than to fight.

The crowd made an appreciative noise as another slave approached bearing a clear bubble-like vessel in which a mass of tentacles undulated. Trainer carefully lifted the creature out of the bowl and lifted it high over his head so that the guests could truly appreciate its magnificence before he lowered it slowly towards Ianto's stomach.

"Oh no. No. No. No." Ianto fought against his bonds again as he worked out just what was they intended to do with alien cephalopod. Arms held him firmly against the table as the creature was set gently on his stomach.

Suckers glided over his skin, tickling his sides and belly. With agonizing languor the tentacles crept lower and the cephalopod began to crawl as it scented the attractant that had been smeared between Ianto's legs.

The crowd murmured as they craned forward to get a better view. Overhead, a vidscreen came to life. Its placement wasn't for the benefit of the audience, but for him, so he could not miss a single moment of his defilement. Unable to shut his eyes as the entertainment's designer predicted, Ianto looked up into it and watched, horrified, as he was given an unhampered view of the gelatinous mass as it crawled onto his cock and began to suction attractant into its mouth.

Ianto gasped. Despite his predicament, the wriggling, crawling, sucking sensations felt _good_. Had Jack been there, he would have told him to stop being prudish and provincial. The best course of action would be to relax and go with it. So what if there was an audience? This was an opportunity to try something new and exciting.

Though he wasn't sure he entirely agreed, Ianto quit struggling and rationalised his submission. The sooner the audience got what it wanted, the sooner his trial would end. He tried not to think of Petal, who had been torn apart as she was ravaged by a sea monster as Trainer patted his knee, offering reassurance that at least his trial could be survived, before he began to fuck into Ianto's hole with a long, sinuous, fingertip.

Deliberately, as the tentacles crept downward and the creature slid between his legs, Ianto relaxed his lower body, timing his breathing with the thrusts of Trainer's finger. He barely noticed when the finger was replaced. The cephalopod had scented the bait and was eagerly seeking it, pushing into Ianto's body one tentacle at a time.

Wider and wider Ianto's anus was stretched open as the creature wiggled and crept inward, deciding perhaps it had found a means of escape as well as a tasty snack. Trainer stroked Ianto's cock, continuing to offer sensual reassurance as his rectum was stretched and filled by the squirming, wriggling mass of tentacles.

Trainer's hand on his cock. A different slave, the one who had held him down, stroked his chest, playing with his nipples and bringing them to painfully hard peaks. Ianto pushed them upward, hoping the slave would take the cue and either wet his fingertips or lean over and suck on them instead. He couldn't stand it. He needed more pressure against his cock and less against his rectum. Sweat broke out over his brow and his breathing began to get heavy. He was going to die of kinky sex, he knew it. He thought of Jack again, and although he was in an agony of pain and pleasure, he almost smiled, knowing that this was a death he'd approve of. Maybe, if Ianto ever figured out how to get home, he'd find a way to arrange it, because, God help him, this was better than the time Jack had introduced him to fisting.

His balls contracted. Ianto gave a strangled cry and bucked upward into the hand that blissfully, finally, closed around his cock, giving him something to fuck into, and he erupted, spraying come so hard it landed on his lips.

The audience gasped and stamped enthusiastically in appreciation.

Chest heaving, eyes closed, Ianto felt fingers push into him once more. Centimetre by centimetre, the intruder was extracted from his body until he was finally emptied. So relieved, he barely noticed that a new hand was stroking his brow. A new, very human shaped hand. It travelled down the side of his face, wiped away cooling come from his chin. It ghosted lightly over his shoulder and down his arm and then disappeared long enough for the cuff of his left hand to be untied from the table and lowered gently to his side. The same sensual exploration continued over his right side, his arm soothed as it was released and brought to rest. A soft kiss grazed each knee as his legs were freed and repositioned, still slightly open on the table.

Though he was exhausted, Ianto opened his eyes. A dark head was bent over his body and fingertips he knew well were caressing the skin under his balls and carefully stretching his anus open once more to push a soothing balm into his rectum.

From around him came the sounds of sex. While he'd been half out of it, the non-indigenous slaves had been released from their master's sides. They reclined on low couches or leaned against tables and pillars in groups of twos and threes, exploring each other's bodies, pleasuring them for their master's enjoyment.

"Jack. Thank God, Jack," Ianto babbled, too relieved to contain himself. "How did you find me?"

The eyes that met his were puzzled. Ianto's smile faded. It was Jack who was soothing him. Who was coming around the table. Who was pulling Ianto into his arms and then kissing him with lips he knew well. But it wasn't _his_ Jack. This man was younger looking. Or perhaps it was the weight of his years hadn't bore down as heavily as those had on the Jack Harkness he knew.

Emotions reeling, Ianto decided he didn't care. It was clear that despite the fact he'd been the opening act at the orgy, he was still meant to give an encore performance, and if he was going to have sex with anybody, then he'd rather it was Jack. Even if was a Jack he didn't know.

Jack, this Jack, hopped up onto the table, putting himself on display. He leaned backwards to show off his body before encouraging Ianto to straddle his legs so that they could continue kissing. He murmured words against Ianto's ear. Most of them Ianto didn't understand, but he got their gist; 'Play along and you'll get through this.'

His skin buzzing, Ianto inhaled sharply as his cock brushed against Jack's already rampant erection. He shifted his weight, letting it drag along Jack's thigh as he crawled backwards, planting a line of kisses as he went, tasting something spicy that had been rubbed into Jack's skin. He used the techniques his Jack liked, trusting that one Jack Harkness was much like another when it came to his love of all things sensual. He closed his eyes and let the familiar arousal pheromones soothe him as he relaxed his throat and worked up a mouthful of saliva. He dipped forward and engulfed the erection, burying his nose in the bush of coarse hair at its base.

Jack murmured the word 'good' as Ianto drew slowly backwards, up over the velvety soft head and then dropped down again. He found his rhythm, sucking and tonguing as he bobbed his mouth over the head and shaft.

Ianto got hard again. Achingly so. He pulled off Jack's cock and climbed up his body until they were chest to chest and then he reached between them and pushed his erection into the gap between Jack's thighs.

Slowly, they ground against one another, kissing and touching as much of each other as they could reach. From time to time, Jack would glance towards the audience. Curious as to why, Ianto followed his line of sight.

One of the masters sat slightly apart from the others, absently patting a kneeling slave whose head bobbed between his legs. His eyes were locked on Jack.

Jack noticed Ianto noticing and pulled him down into a kiss. When they broke apart he whispered urgently again.

Ianto didn't understand the words, but he got their meaning. 'We need to please _him_.'

He doubted he could manage another fucking after the pounding his arse had taken, but his cock was hard and desperate for release. He gave Jack another long, lingering kiss to let him know he understood, and then got off the table. His legs trembled but held as he gestured for Jack to scoot down to the end and then raise and spread his thighs.

Ianto raised a mouthful of saliva as he hooked Jack's knees over his shoulders to fully expose his hole. He spit into it and then used first the blade of his tongue and then the tip to lick the saliva back out again, fucking into Jack's anus.

Jack groaned, a good sign that he liked tongue-play. Ianto kept teasing, letting Jack's knees gradually fall open wider until he was splayed completely open and his hips rocked upward to meet the thrusts of Ianto's tongue.

Raising one more mouthful of saliva, Ianto spat into Jack's open and ready arsehole, and then guided his cock against it. They moaned in tandem as Ianto took his first, balls deep, thrust.

The heat and pressure of Jack's body were almost more than his sensitive cock could bear. Ianto pulled nearly all the way out, the tip of his cock surrounded by the tight ring of muscle, and then he pushed all the way back in until his balls slapped Jack's arse.

Jack rocked his hips and Ianto grinned. Yet another similarity between this Jack and his; they both liked to top from the bottom. Ianto gave Jack's cock a playful slap. Jack grinned back at him and rocked his hips. Ianto started thrusting like a porn star, rolling his hips from side to side and up and down.

The sounds of people getting off came from everywhere. No doubt, if he could pull his eyes away from Jack, his face, and the hand he worked over his cock, the education he might receive in interspecies sexual techniques would be illuminating. But Ianto only had eyes for Jack; the reddening of his lips, the beading of sweat that broke out over his chest and brow, the way his hand grazed over his cock, and the way he exposed his throat and screwed his eyes shut tight when he wasn't holding Ianto's gaze.

Ianto took his cues from Jack's body language, making his thrusts faster or slower, deeper or more shallow, sometimes pulling out all together for another round of rimming and tongue-play, so that he could prolong Jack's, and by proxy, his master's, pleasure as long as possible. But finally he couldn't hold out any longer. His legs were exhausted and he could feel his balls climbing tight against his body. He pulled out and aimed his cock, shooting his come over Jack's chest before slumping forward to suck Jack's balls into his mouth, finally finishing him off with two fingers, rubbing firmly over his prostate.

They were both trembling wrecks. Jack, his chest heaving, made a grab for Ianto's hand and caught him by the wrist instead. Slaves held them upright long enough to show off their debauched bodies and to help them drink bowls of a fizzing, slightly alcoholic drink, and then they were led away to a small chamber to recover.

They slumped against one another, kissing away the cooling come that spattered their bodies, laughing, although Ianto couldn't really figure out what he found funny. Jack's master entered. He stroked Jack lovingly on the head and called him 'his good boy'. He petted Ianto as well, letting his palm travel slowly from the top of his head and down his cheek before revealing the lead in his opposite hand. He clipped the lead to Ianto's collar, before saying something incomprehensible to Jack. Jack smiled at them both in reply.

***

On the trip to his new home Ianto watched Jack take eye-fucking to a whole new level. He never touched his master once, but by the time they got to the gates of the villa, Citizen Moliki was practically vibrating with suppressed sexual desire and his skin was flushed with excitement. When Jack noticed Ianto noticing, he winked and squeezed his fingertips to let him know everything was still going to plan.

They entered the villa through a side entrance. No servants met them as they traversed the back corridors straight to their master's private chambers. There, he dropped his travelling cloak and gestured that Ianto and Jack should strip out of their kilts and jackets.

Jack chucked his clothes off unceremoniously and dropped straight to his knees, burying his head between the join of the four thighs, licking wantonly. He gestured that Ianto should join him. The flesh there was slick with arousal secretions. Ianto lapped at them, and learned that the cock of a master was an even more intimidating thing than the practice model suggested, long and irregularly shaped with a second jutting swelling several centimetres below the head. Or perhaps Citizen Moliki was just particularly well endowed. Either way, he knew come morning he'd have a stiff jaw to take his mind off his sore arse.

Their master groaned with relief, his enjoyment obvious as he held his slaves close. He prefaced the word 'boy' with a word Ianto didn't know, but his next command was familiar. "Bath," before he pushed them away.

Jack took Ianto's hand as they crawled backwards, and drew him into a kiss that tasted of all three of them. He gave Ianto another encouraging smile, to let him know that he was doing well, and then pulled him to his feet and led the way into the next chamber.

He pressed a button on the side of the pool, and it began to fill. Moliki used the time to grope Ianto before pushing him back to his knees. Jack dropped beside him, offering a steadying presence as Ianto gripped the bulbous head of Moliki's cock in one hand and then wrapped his lips around it. Its girth intimidated him, but he'd seen Jack take it down, so he knew it wasn't as impossible a task as it first appeared. He got as far as the ridged surface between the two bulbs before he had to pull off and give his jaw a rest. Jack patted his back and leaned in from the other side, and they worked in tandem until they were forced away again.

This time Moliki dropped to his knees too. He gently repositioned Ianto so that he was facing away with his legs spread and then he ran one of long fingertips between his arse cheeks, following the caress with a swipe of his tongue.

Ianto was sore from being fucked by the alien cephalopod, but not nearly as sore as he thought he'd be. Whatever Jack had used to soothe his overstretched muscles had worked a treat. Moliki's tongue fucking felt fantastic, he'd clearly been tutored by Jack in the finer points of anilingus. When he wrapped one of his paddle-like hands around Ianto's cock and tiny suction cups began to mouth him, any misgivings he might have had about being ill-treated by his new master faded entirely.

Jack gave Ianto a deep kiss and then crawled around to offer his arse to his master. They continued to kiss as Moliki replaced the tongue in Ianto's arse with fingers, stretching him open as he fondled both his slaves with equal enthusiasm.

Moliki spoke. Ianto recognised the words 'now' 'water' and 'boys' and followed Jack into the bathing pool, bracing his arms against the sides as Jack did and spreading his legs wide open.

Moliki grasped Jack around the chest and draped himself over his back. Jack groaned loudly as he was penetrated, but he smiled and leaned over for a kiss, moaning with abandon into Ianto's mouth as his master didn't so much as thrust, as undulate against him, until Jack was on the verge of orgasm. Moliki patted Jack's back as he pulled away, and spoke soothingly and then he indicated that it was Ianto's turn. 

For a second time that night, Ianto's rectum was stretched past his usual comfort point. He drew a deep breath, riding through the initial resistance, and then gasped again as a throbbing sensation began to fill his senses, making his cock ache with a renewed need to fuck. Moliki pulled out, just as Ianto began to teeter on the brink of a powerful orgasm and he reclaimed Jack's arse.

Ianto knew he should stay where he was, but his hypersensitive cock wouldn't let him. Even the swirling current of the water was a tease. He needed more contact but he didn't want to jerk off into his hand. With his legs trembling, he draped himself over Moliki's back and buried his cock between his master's legs. It slipped into a grooved passage that seemed made for fucking. Ianto rocked his hips, thrusting until his balls climbed tight against his groin. He clutched Moliki between the pairs of arms and felt Jack's back tense underneath them.

Moliki shuddered against Ianto's chest. The contraction of muscles against his cock threw him over the edge and he came hard, spurting against his master's body.

Ianto pulled off, trembling and completely spent. Jack didn't look much better. He was so weak-kneed that he had to be helped to sit down on the bench that ran around the perimeter of the pool. Their master slumped next to them, his hands shaking as he fumbled the control panel open to drain the bath of the come-polluted water and replace it with fresh so they could clean up. He beckoned to Ianto to join them, putting a set of arms around both his favourites, muttering endearments and stroking them lovingly as they recovered their strength before he helped them to their bed.

To be continued ... 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rules of Hospitality ruin Jaxx's chance to get to know Ianto better. Ianto gets a promotion that he has mixed feelings about, and Citizen Notoni hatches a plot to cut herself in on the lucrative gambling trade on Telos.

***

Jaxx thought Cook was going to have a coronary when Ianto poured some of his precious supply of coffea beans into a skillet and began to heat them, rattling the pan every few ticks to makes sure they didn't burn. That wasn't the way they were normally prepared, and evidently what Ianto was doing was culinary sacrilege. But once Jaxx got a whiff of the tantalising fragrance of the toasting beans, he decided to reserve judgement, at least until he got a taste of the final product. Because if the new preparation was half as good as it smelled, it was going to be very good indeed.

With a satisfied nod, Ianto lifted the pan from the heat and poured the beans into the grinder, pulsing the mechanism and checking the contents several times before he was satisfied with the result. Only then did he return to the stove where he added the aromatic powder to a simmering pot of water. He began to count aloud, practising his broken Moringan. When he hit one hundred eighty, the brewing process was complete. Ianto poured his creation into drinking bowls and offered one to Cook with a polite smile before setting the second one in front of Jaxx, and lifting the third to his own lips.

Hesitantly, Cook took a sip and made a grudging noise of approval. Jaxx's mouth had started watering the moment the coffea beans began to toast and he had to swallow before he sampled the dark liquid. It was so unlike the thin, slightly acidic beverage he was used to he could hardly believe it came from the same source. As for Ianto, he looked practically orgasmic, and his expression of bliss sent a rush of heat through Jaxx's veins that had nothing to do with the delicious drink.

He was a mystery, was Ianto Jones. How he came to be on Moringa was a puzzle. He claimed to be from Earth of all places. But no one had come from there, not for centuries. He didn't speak any language Jaxx recognised except for the broken Moringan he'd picked up since he'd been enslaved. Not even the translator microbes, a by-product of Jaxx's military service, could make sense of the language Ianto spoke, and he had spoken a lot in his sleep, repeating 'Jack' in that curious accent of his, over and over again, as if it was a mantra or a prayer.

And then there was the look Ianto had given him when he'd come up onto the stage, so full of recognition and relief, as if he had known Jaxx would care for him after his encounter with the ratanga. As he watched Ianto drink his coffea, a feeling Jaxx had thought he'd lost the capacity to have surged over him. He needed to protect Ianto. To keep him safe and to care for him. Rescuing him from the clutches of Citizen Notoni was just the first step. He needed to solve the mystery of how Ianto had ended up lost so far from his home.

The roasted coffea had a revivifying effect that was even more profound than the drink Jaxx was used to. After Ianto prepared another brew, so that Cook could learn the technique, they were shooed from the kitchen. Jaxx decided what they needed was a swim to work off the unexpected surge of energy and to stretch their muscles after the rigours of the night before. He took Ianto out to the pool where they could swim laps and lark about in the warm salt water. Jaxx didn't know if Moliki was watching, but if he was then he hoped his master was enjoying the show, because Ianto was proving to be too much of a temptation to pass up.

They were laughing when they finally hauled themselves out of the pool, giddy from a round of below the waterline teasing and tickling that ended up with Ianto pressed against the side and Jaxx's legs hooked around his hips as they rubbed off against one another. Ianto's smile wobbled when he picked up a lock of his long, unkempt hair and frowned at it. He mimed cutting it and looked at Jaxx hopefully. Jaxx smiled back. He wasn't much of a barber, but he had the tools. He wrapped his arm around Ianto's shoulders and took him back to his room.

Ianto looked much younger minus the beard and with his hair cut as short as a trooper's. He admired Jaxx's handiwork in the mirror. The grooming seemed to restore some of his confidence and he stood much taller, his shoulders no longer bowed with a slave's diffidence when he emerged from his post-haircut shower. But his good mood was short-lived as they tried to get better acquainted. "Words!" he said vehemently, as if he was cursing. It was obvious he was profoundly frustrated by his inability to communicate.

It was if someone had hit the control on his shock collar. Jaxx looked up at Ianto and grinned at the obviousness of it all. He grabbed Ianto's upper arms and said very clearly, "I have words! I can give you words!" He mimed the last bit for good measure, pointing at his temple and mouth and then at Ianto's.

"How? How can you give me words?" Ianto parroted, tripping over the words he'd not used before.

Jaxx stumbled. How could he explain about the microscopic computers that were injected into every trooper's bloodstream on induction so that they could mix with people from a dozen disparate planetary systems and still be understood? Especially when Ianto had a kitchen slave's vocabulary. He pressed his fingertips together to indicate something very, very, tiny. "Nanites."

Impossibly, Ianto recognised the term. His eyes got wide with excitement. "How?"

A medical officer had used a pressurised syringe to inject the nanites into Jaxx's bloodstream. But during training he'd been taught that, in a pinch, a direct transfusion could be administered with the same result. He mimed stabbing his finger with the scissors and sucking the blood from the wound. Ianto pulled a face, but then he nodded and reached out to steady Jaxx's hand as he readied the scissors to strike. His thumbs against Jaxx's palm were a comfort against the pain of the blade and the warmth of his tongue as he coaxed blood from the wound was even better. They were both a bit breathless as Ianto finally let go of Jaxx's hand.

"How – " Ianto scowled as he searched for another world he didn't know. He stretched his hands apart to indicate the span of time.

"Long," Jaxx said, supplying yet another word in Ianto's vocabulary. "How long?" He shook his head to indicate he didn't know. There were too many variables to consider, including how many nanites were actually present in the blood sample and how aggressive Ianto's immune system was. The MO had said that despite precautions to mask their presence, nanites weren't invulnerable to circulating white cells. "Soon." He clasped Ianto's shoulder firmly. In the meantime there were other ways they could communicate. Jaxx pulled Ianto down onto the mattress with him to see if he couldn't pass along a few more creative phrases before the call came to report to their master's office.

***

It was deja vu all over again, Ianto thought morosely as he let Jaxx pull him back into bed. Once again he was dependent on a man named Jack, okay, Jaxx, close enough, for help and protection, and once again, just like when he had tried to help Lisa, he was already starting to feel caught in the middle because he genuinely liked the Jack Harkness doppelgänger.

It felt like this could have been Jack after he'd been tempered by war, but before the weight of his centuries ground him down. Jaxx was the man Jack often pretended to be, and sometimes even was: spontaneous, fun loving. A man who preferred sunlight to shadows, because in the shadows it was easier to let the mask slip and the pain show through. Jaxx genuinely liked everybody, including his master. He'd willingly seduced Ianto because it would bring all three of them pleasure. Jaxx was loveable, and it was going to hurt to say goodbye to him when he finally figured a way out of this mess and returned home.

Jaxx stroked his fingers against Ianto's freshly-shaved jaw, pulling him out of his thoughts. Their eyes met and Jaxx frowned at Ianto's half-hearted kisses.

"Sorry," Ianto said. "Tired." He mimed sleeping by putting his folded hands to his cheek and shutting his eyes. After the exertions of the night before and their time in the pool, not to mention the weight that had lifted from his shoulders after finding a safe harbour, he really was exhausted.

Jaxx nodded back and spooned up close, stroking Ianto's back and shoulders as he started to drift off.

There was a knock at the door. Jaxx eased away to answer. Ianto started to get up as well, but Jaxx pressed his shoulder to the mattress and mimed he should stay before gathering up his clothes and slipping quietly from the room.

***

Jaxx couldn't believe his ears. Moliki was sending Ianto back to the House of Notoni. Not planning, it was a done deal. There was an overseer waiting in the great hall and a transport cart idling in the drive. That he was genuinely apologetic didn't really make the situation better.

"Don't look at me like that, boy." Moliki tried to pat Jaxx on the knee but he shifted out of range. "I'm fond of him too. I should have explained last night about these temporary arrangements, but I didn't want to spoil the fun."

Jaxx was on the verge of losing his temper with his master. Ianto hadn't been having fun, well maybe a little towards the end, with the ratanga. He'd been scared out his mind when they put the creature on his belly and he'd worked out just what its intentions were. And there had been rumours, frightened whispers, about what Notoni had initially had planned for her main event. Those rumours said it had been far too shocking even for the liberal-minded crowd who had attended the party, but she had got a real thrill during the trial run. What if she decided on another performance for herself and a few less squeamish friends? There had been disappointed faces in the crowd when Ianto was able to leave the centre stage more or less  
under his own steam. What if she decided to star him in another one of her sadistic entertainments?

"We rescued him!" Jaxx argued. "We can't send him back to her!"

"Now, Fetch, don't be dramatic," Moliki said in a rarely used sharp voice.

That he called Jaxx 'Fetch' instead of one his numerous variations of 'boy' was a bad sign. But Jaxx already knew that he was so far over the line that he might as well be arguing his point from space. He was an indentured servant, no matter how indulged. Moliki was his master. What he said, went. If he wanted to he could revoke every one of Jaxx's privileges, confine him to quarters except for supervised exercise periods, and put him on a diet of kelp cakes and water. And no one would bat an eyelash, if they had any to bat, that was.

"There are rules of hospitality at play here," Moliki explained in a softer, more mollifying tone. "And those rules might get bent occasionally, but they are never broken. You had a lovely time with your new playmate. We both did. But now he has to go home."

Jaxx shut his eyes and counted his heartbeats, willing himself to calm down. He'd made a connection with Ianto Jones, one he wasn't willing to let go of quite as easily as his master wanted him to. He'd just have to work on Moliki until they saw things the same way. "Yes, sir. One favour?"

"Of course, boy. If I can."

Jaxx looked Moliki straight in the eye, still angry, but willing to accept the situation for the moment. "He needs to hear this from both of us. He might take it better if you explain about these rules. Tell him you'll fix it so he can come and visit."

For a moment, Moliki seemed ruffled, but then he nodded his head. Clearly he had hoped to avoid another scene and have Clock or one of the other retainers supervise Ianto's removal.

Jaxx opened the door and lowered his head as he gestured that Moliki should take the lead on the trip back to his quarters to break the news to Ianto.

***

Ianto watched the gates of House Moliki recede into the distance with a heavy heart. He should have known that escape from the grasp of Citizen Notoni couldn't possibly be as easy as it had seemed. Most of the other black-collared slaves jostling round the back of the hovercraft must have felt the same way, although disturbingly, there seemed to be some that were relieved to be going home to their mistress.

The idea that there were worse places to be than the House of Notoni was a sobering thought. Ianto had gone willingly with Jaxx to provide what he'd thought would be a private show for Citizen Moliki. That the master of the house had joined in turned out to be a surprise, but not as it happened, an unpleasant one. Moliki had shown Ianto a good time and had made sure he was well cared for. He had been fed a sumptuous breakfast, even coffee or coffea as Jaxx had called it. He'd been allowed to cut his hair and shave, which had been a welcome luxury. He'd been treated as a guest and not just a fuck toy to be used and discarded. And Moliki had seemed truly apologetic as he tried to explain about the misunderstanding, his hands had waved with a display of genuine agitation as he'd offered an apology along with a final caution that it was in all of their best interests to keep quiet about what they'd enjoyed while Ianto was under his roof.

But most of the returning slaves hadn't fared as well. Some had visible bruises. Others had the hollow look that suggested they had retreated into the private place of safety they had created in their heads as Trainer had taught them; a sanctuary of happy memories so they could endure debasing treatment at the hands of the citizen who had taken them home to use in private. Ianto felt a pang of guilt for enjoying his night away.

But had he really fared better than the rest, he wondered as they pulled into the gates of yet another estate. His time at the House of Moliki had ignited a fierce hope in his heart that he'd found a safe haven where he would be cared for rather than abused until he could figure out a way to get through to Jack and be rescued. Finding out that he had been loaned out rather than sold had been a rude shock that had brought him abruptly to his senses. Wherever he was it was hostile territory. He was lucky that letting his guard down hadn't been a fatal mistake.

But what about Jaxx? Ianto wondered. Jaxx had generously shared the nanite technology he possessed. Granted, he could have had selfish reasons for doing so. If the locals weren't treated then maybe the nanites would have allowed them to have private conversations in front of Citizen Moliki. Now that he was inoculated it would be possible to speak and be understood much sooner than he would be able to manage on his own. Picking up a word here and a phrase there as he listened to others speak was an arduous process and God only knew if he was assigning the right meanings to the words he'd so painfully memorised. 

Maybe Jaxx's open book persona was a façade and he wasn't the happy slave he pretended to be. Maybe he had needed an ally too. One who wasn't functionally incompressible. Or maybe he was just genuinely lonely for the sound of a human voice, which was hardly a sinister reason for sharing the gift of communication with a man he thought was going to be his new companion and lover and potentially even his friend.

Impatiently Ianto concentrated on the low conversation of the nearest pair of slaves, but their murmuring voices were still the same, mostly incomprehensible, babble they had been since he'd first started trying to learn their language. Intellectually he knew that even if the microscopic devices had been optimally delivered, it would take time for them to replicate to a critical mass before their network could activate and they'd be able to receive and process data. Until then he'd have to keep on as he had, listening and watching, and hoping he was getting it right.

He looked across the bay and got a good view of the spaceport. Sturdy looking transport vessels, too utilitarian looking to be meant for anything but cargo, took off and landed at irregular intervals. If he could smuggle himself onto one of them he could be free of Moringa, even if he would still be far from home. Would it be worth the risk? What if Jack tracked him this far only to learn he had run off? 

He would have to leave a trail. A carefully laid path of breadcrumbs that only Jack would be able to follow. Which meant a spontaneous bolt for the spaceport and smuggling himself off planet was flat out of the question, but learning as much as he could about shipping operations, once he had the capacity to do so, had just become a priority. Goals were good, Ianto thought as he traced the pathway of a transport before it burst free from the stratosphere. They made the insurmountable problems in his life seem manageable. Achieve fluency. Worm his way into a position where he could learn more about how things worked. Endure petty cruelties and not let them crush his spirit, so that when he was rescued he'd still be worth saving, unlike some of the poor souls around him who were already lost.

The final slave was led out, submissive and limping. He wore a resigned expression as his collar was scanned, confirming his retrieval and a note added to Overseer's data pad, presumably regarding the condition Notoni's property was returned in, and then he was boosted into the back. No one, not even the guards said anything, but their expressions spoke volumes as the transport turned onto the road to House Notoni, and for the time being, home.

***

"You made this bed, Jaxx boy, now you've got to lie in it. Or recreate in it, whatever." Jaxx threw a stone, hard, into the bay, impotently venting off his frustration. It was another perfect day in paradise and he didn't give a damn. He was caught in the grip of a grey funk. The sort he usually mocked other people for indulging in. But this time, instead of giving himself an hour to sulk before packing his pain away, he'd embraced the malaise. He went through his day on autopilot, ran the errands he was directed to run, spoke when he was spoken to, and retreated as soon as it was humanly possible to the beach where he could be alone.

It had been a week since he'd seen Ianto, and he still couldn't get the other man's stricken look of betrayal out of his mind. Ianto had reacted just as Jaxx had anticipated he would. When Moliki had shown the lead, Ianto pleaded in broken Moringan not to be returned to Notoni. There had been real fear in his eyes. Fear that left Moliki in a subdued state when Ianto finally bent his neck in submission and let Clock escort him to the main hall. Fear that still haunted Jaxx's dreams.

He was surprised at how angry he was at Moliki and even more surprised at how upset he was over Ianto's plight. He was a Fetch. He'd been in and out of every estate Moliki did business with. He'd seen how the slaves were treated, and up until that point, he had shrugged it off. It was a tough universe and at least the slaves of Moringa had roofs over their heads and regular meals, unlike the scores of refugees from war-blighted planets and the Exes who were begging for scraps. So why was Ianto different?

Was it because they'd had sex? Jaxx had had sex with a dozen slaves since his arrival on Moringa. He'd liked most of them well enough, but none of them meant anything to him one way or the other.

Was it because Ianto was human? Jaxx had to ponder that for a while as he stared out onto the water and watched the waves churn under a stiff breeze.

No, that wasn't it either, he decided at last. The majority of his battlefield conquests had been human and for the most part he hadn't spared a thought for any of them, even after they'd been sent into combat.

It just wasn't his nature to be sentimental that way. He lived and loved in the moment and then once the moment was over, he moved on. Given the tumultuous nature of war, to do otherwise would leave him permanently heartbroken and an emotional cripple, and Jaxx's survival instincts were too well developed for that.

Then what was it about Ianto Jones had left him feeling so bereft? Jaxx didn't know. He just knew that since Ianto had been packed off he felt hollow, as if something had been ripped out of his insides. Jaxx sighed. In the few short hours they'd been together, Ianto had got under his skin and into his blood. Not being able to see him, to assure himself he was all right, was driving him mad with frustration.

He had money. Moliki had returned his credit chits along with the rest of his personal possessions when Jaxx had earned his silver collar. If he was a citizen he could buy Ianto from Notoni. Except he wasn't and never could be. He didn't have enough arms or legs to be a citizen.

Moliki could make an offer for Ianto, except he wasn't getting on with Notoni. Something had gone south on the deal they were cooking up and he didn't want to give her any kind of bargaining chips. They were in a middle of a stand off and until someone yielded, Jaxx couldn't even check up on Ianto to make sure he was all right during one his courier runs, because House Notoni was off-limits.

Across the bay a freighter took off from the spaceport. Jaxx watched its progress until it disappeared and sighed, wondering what it would take to bust free of their collars and smuggle himself and Ianto on board an outbound ship and off Moringa.

An electronic chime broke into Jaxx's frustrated reverie. He activated his wristband and Clock's slightly harried voice came over the comm. "Fetch, the master wants you in his office."

Jaxx heaved a sigh and then acknowledged. He tossed one more rock at the bay and then returned to the villa.

***

Ianto took the carefully arranged tray of choice morsels intended for the mistress's table and a pitcher of laka juice to Clock's office. It was late and strictly speaking, delivering the tray was his last official duty of the day, but if things went to plan it would be some time before he returned to the slaves' quarters.

Each night since his return, he'd made small but deliberate advances towards Clock, throwing himself into her pathway and going out of his way to brighten her day. In the kitchen he took charge of preparing and delivering her meal trays. When he cleaned her office, he made a point to be cheerful and efficient.

Making himself indispensable to Clock was preferable to seducing Citizen Notoni, a plan that had been contemplated and rapidly discarded. Her kink wasn't exotica but sadism. Body slaves regularly were sent to the healer after a visit to their mistress's chambers, and Ianto had no desire to be among the number who were too scarred to relate exactly what had been done to them as they satisfied her twisted desires.

Besides, as he well knew, the keys to the kingdom were usually held by the most trusted assistant. Clock kept the estate and Notoni's business interests running like a finely oiled machine and managed Notoni just as efficiently. She was the one Ianto needed to wrap around his finger if he was to become operationally literate.

Nerves made his stomach flutter and his heart race. He could feel the pulse jumping against his collar as he reviewed his game plan. He took a deliberate breath and then knocked.

"Come in."

Clock seemed flustered as she shuffled the documents on her desk. Her colour was unusually high. Ianto wondered if she had been looking at porn and nearly smirked. The only time he'd ever seen a female that shade of coral was when she was sexually aroused.

"I was hoping it would be you, 27."

"I am a man, not a number," Ianto thought to himself as he smiled politely. He latched the door behind him, making sure there would be no disturbances, and then advanced, encroaching just a little more than was necessary into Clock's personal space as he moved to place the tray where he knew she would want it.

"Put the tray on the table."

Ianto set the tray on the sideboard and poured a serving of laka juice. Very carefully he placed it before Clock, holding it so she had no choice but to brush against his fingers as she accepted the bowl.

As he pressed in to steady her hands before withdrawing to a respectful distance, he glanced at the paperwork she'd so hastily straightened. The curving letters seemed to swim before his eyes and then abruptly they became perfectly legible English. Ianto shut his eyes and blinked hard, but it wasn't an optical illusion. The translator microbes had finally reached a critical mass and their network had synced with his language centres. He could read Moringan.

The top document was a memo. He read the name Moliki and the words 'leverage' and 'Crystal Casino'. Realising the document could be important, he took a mental snapshot to look at later and reluctantly returned his focus to Clock. She'd said something that he'd missed. He played the sounds back and the words, 'He's not very attractive, but Moliki seemed to enjoy him.' reconstructed themselves into a perfectly understandable sentence.

"Sorry. Slower?" Ianto stretched his hands apart.

"I said... Never mind what I said." Clock folded her arms across her chest and stroked her sides lightly. "Strip."

Ianto nodded. He kept his expression placid, but his danger sense began to ping on high alert as he removed his open jacket and kilt and placed them on the opposite end of the sideboard. This was the moment he'd been working towards since his return to the estate.

Clock made a twirling motion with her fingers. Obediently, Ianto raised his arms to the sides and did a slow one eighty, giving the senior slave a good view of his arse before he rotated to face her once more.

"Attend."

Ianto didn't need nanites to tell him what Clock wanted. He could see it in the hungry expression that defocused her eyes and the way her colouring deepened. She'd definitely been on the verge of sexual arousal when he'd entered the office.

Very calculatedly, using techniques he'd developed on his own and then refined watching the lessons of Trainer, Ianto began to peel Clock out of her skirt and the long, coordinating knee-length vest, slipping each fastening free in such a way that he lightly caressed the bare skin underneath until the garment fell open. Keeping one hand on the top of her shoulder, Ianto moved around to Clock's back and eased the flowing fabric from her body. Folding it carefully, so that it wouldn't wrinkle unnecessarily, he placed it next to his clothing. Then he began a slow and teasing massage.

Like most people in high stress jobs who spent too much time behind desks, Clock's neck and shoulders were a mass of tension. Ianto ran his palms across the places he knew to be the most likely in need of attention, soothing them with feathery strokes before using his fingertips to dig into the stubborn knots. Clock tensed and then sighed as bit by bit the muscle fibres were eased back into their proper places. Only when she was lax under his hands did Ianto let his fingers drift to the erogenous zones under her arms and along her rib cage, keeping his touch gentle until her gills slits began to slowly fan.

Trainer had cautioned it was important to move slowly and be deliberately sensual when arousing a female out of spawning season. Bearing the advice in mind, Ianto stepped closer, brushing his chest lightly against Clock's back as he wrapped her in an embrace. She shivered underneath him, pushing her buttocks into his groin and muttered, "Good. Yes. Like that."

Ianto kept up his teasing, letting her set the pace of the seduction, watching her colour deepen as he began to let his hands drift lower, over her hips and thighs. He dropped to his knees and urged her legs apart, placing a hand against the small of her back and encouraging her to lean against the desk for support as he began to very gently massage the slowly dilating aperture between her legs.

Clock's shivering intensified. Ianto reached up stroking her chest and flanks and the sensitive space between her arms and her waist as he lapped at her cloaca with his tongue. She was close. Very close. Ianto pinched her quite hard at the bottom of her rib cage and Clock went completely stiff. A trickle of warm sticky fluid splashed onto Ianto's tongue. He opened his mouth and pressed his lips tight against Clock's skin and swallowed as spawning emulsion spurted into his mouth, riding through the climax until he was pushed away and sent sprawling onto the tiles.

"Trainer said you were a good pupil," Clock commented when she'd collected herself enough to speak.

Ianto watched with hooded eyes, stroking himself with an idle hand. The stone floor was cool against his back and he rather enjoyed the sensation after being pressed so closely against Clock's over-heated skin. She was looking at him speculatively. The wheels in her head were practically visible as she watched his erection grow.

"Stop! Not here."

Ianto stilled his hand, but he kept his eyes firmly on Clock's face, trying to read her emotions: desire and lust conflicting with duty. Despite her position there were probably limits to her privileges.

She wrote out an order and then dropped it onto Ianto's belly. "Tomorrow, 27, you enter my personal service. Report at the first bell. Now get dressed and get out. I have work to do."

Ianto licked his lips and nodded. He put on his clothes as languorously as he'd stripped out of them and then slipped out into the corridor with a pounding heart. He'd accomplished his mission and potentially learned something interesting, if he could reconstruct the memo he'd seen about Moliki.

***

Jaxx thrust methodically into a valley between Bubbles' shoulder ridges. The angle wasn't doing much for him, and because of something that had to do with her recent moult, she needed more skin to skin contact if she was ever going to get off. He paused and shifted their bodies, positioning her so that she stood upright instead of on her paws, and then he anchored her against his chest with a leg drawn close around where her hip would be, if her skeletal anatomy included hips. It wasn't the most comfortable position he'd ever been in, but it did make it easy to rub off against her back, so he went with it. Bubbles seemed to appreciate being trapped between his chest and thigh, she began to coo loudly, like he'd finally hit a sweet spot.

He was aware of their audience, and of their reactions. Citizen Taliki watched them intently, commenting on their performances. Her colour was deeply mottled, betraying how excited she was by the show. It was clear she was getting off on the sex as much as her slave was. No doubt, as soon as Jaxx and Moliki cleared out, Taliki would hit playback on the vidcam and she'd indulge herself with Bubbles in stereo, regardless of the interspecies taboo.

Moliki watched closely as well, although for once, he wasn't all that into the action. He smiled at his spawn sister fixedly as he listened to her running commentary and gazed at Bubbles with a discomfited expression that he blanked when he met Jaxx's gaze.

Jaxx shut his eyes and concentrated on heat and pressure around his cock, letting it carry him closer to the edge as he thrust against Bubbles and stroked her downy skin. She liked the noises he made, they excited her, and if she was excited then that made her mistress happy. If Taliki was happy then that generally meant Moliki was as well, which made him more amiable when Jaxx asked favours. 

Pleasing Bubbles was the first link in a self indulgent chain, so Jaxx imagined a body shaped more closely to his own and pretended it was Ianto he was holding in his arms. That it was Ianto's sweat, musky and raw, that filled his nostrils instead of the floral arousal pheromones that were so thick around him that they were nearly cloying. 

He muffled Bubbles' cooing with audio effects of his own, throwing back his head and moaning loudly. His performance was so convincing that his body responded. After a dozen thrusts his hips juddered to a halt and he let Bubbles go, pushing her away so that she was forced to fall forward. She rolled over, looking up at him with wide, defocused eyes as he took himself in hand, jerking off the last few strokes that would take him past the point of no return. He ejaculated over Bubbles' belly. Not for her benefit, but for that of their masters, and then he waited, head bowed, catching his breath, for his audience's reaction.

Taliki stamped her feet in approval. He'd left Bubbles tottering on the edge of her own release, in the perfect state for her horny mistress to finish the job he'd started. She abruptly turned to Moliki and remembered an urgent matter that required her immediate attention.

Moliki rose. Jaxx took that as his signal to leave the stage. He gathered up his clothes and walked out of the room and out of the villa without bothering to dress. He leaned against the side of the hovercraft and looked up at the blanket of stars and let the cool night air wash over his body, wondering which one of them would make a suitable new place to start over. 

So many stars. So many choices. But there was no point in making a decision he couldn't act upon. There was only one place he was going and that was back to Moliki's. He pulled on his clothes and then got behind the controls of the hovercraft, powering it up for a hasty retreat as Moliki hurried out of the front door and got into the passenger seat.

"You excelled yourself, my boy." Moliki reached over and patted Jaxx on the knee. "You left Taliki in a most … invigorated state. I'm indebted to you."

Jaxx wasn't sure he followed. But an indebted Moliki was an indulgent Moliki and that was never a bad thing. "I'm glad she was pleased, sir. Maybe when we get back, I can please you, too." He glanced over at Moliki, hoping he hadn't over-played his hand. During the time he'd been sulking, Moliki had been preoccupied with his business dealings. There'd been no requests to attend the retiring room or clandestine visitations by the master to his servant's chamber, and no opportunity to talk to Moliki about Ianto.

"I'd like that, lovely boy." Moliki patted Jaxx's knee again. "Go to your room and wash away the scent of Taliki's pet, then come through to my bath. I'll join you there after I take care of a matter in my office."

Jaxx kept his face smooth, wondering at Moliki's change in pattern. Usually after a rendezvous his master was so eager they barely made it through the door of the great hall before he manufactured some excuse for the rest of the staff to be dismissed and for them to both be alone and naked. "Yes, sir."

They drove on in silence. Moliki seemed preoccupied. The road was unlit and curving, so Jaxx concentrated on his handling of the hovercraft. The steering had a tendency to over-correct on land, although it handled like a dream on the water. But he couldn't help feeling that Moliki had something important on his mind, and whatever it was, it concerned the both of them.

They parted in the main hall. Moliki threw a significant glance in Jaxx's direction before he headed off towards his office.

"Pleasant day?" Cook asked as Jaxx detoured through the kitchen for a jug of laka juice.

Jaxx shrugged. He knew he should smile and reply with something cheerful, but there was an unwritten rule that slaves were always straight with one another. It was ingrained from the time they took on the black bands and collar of a trainee that one slave's attitude could affect them all, and even in a house as lax as Moliki's, they practised the code.

There hadn't actually been anything wrong with his day that he could pin down. Perfect weather. Easy schedule. No strings sex with an appreciative partner. What could be better? And yet he still had that hollow feeling in his chest that wouldn't go away. "The day was fine. But I've been better," he finally admitted.

"You're pining for something you can't have." Cook shook his head. "I thought you knew better."

"Yeah, so did I." With a final shrug of his shoulders, and before Cook could offer him sage advice he wasn't really in the mood to hear, Jaxx turned away.

"Once you're caught in that current, there's only one sensible thing to do," Cook said to Jaxx's retreating back.

Jaxx looked over his shoulder. "Yeah? What's that?"

"Go with the flow," Cook replied. "To swim against the current is to exhaust the body and the spirit. To dream. To hope, those are reasons to keep your head above the water."

"Even if you can't have what you want?" Jaxx asked softly.

"Who knows what will come when the tide changes?" Cook patted Jaxx on the shoulder. "Enough philosophising." He handed Jaxx another bowl. "Take those and go to the master. I expect he's waiting."

Jaxx looked down at the bowl and then at the elder slave, wondering just when he'd got so transparent. "Thanks."

The thought preoccupied him all the way back to his quarters. He washed, as he'd been instructed, then carried the bowls and jug with him to Moliki's bath. His master was waiting in the pool, head tipped back against the side, and limbs splayed out over the bench.

"I'm here," Jaxx said softly.

"Come here, lovely boy," Moliki replied. "Come into the water and sit with me."

The water was warmer than usual and slippery with benola sap. It coated Jaxx's skin as he submerged his body and immediately he started to relax. Moliki extended his arms and Jaxx let himself be embraced and held against his master's broad chest. Moliki stroked him softly, like the favoured pet he was. Eventually, Jaxx got it into his head that whatever Moliki wanted from him it wasn't sex but comfort, and he began to caress his master in the same, contemplative way, using touch to soothe rather than to excite, as he normally did.

"You're a good and faithful friend, my lovely boy," Moliki said after a long pause. "You go where you're told and do as you're instructed. You put the happiness of others before your own. You did it tonight with Taliki. You read what she wanted, and you gave it to her, and that helped me."

There was something about Moliki's subdued tone that suggested that while he might have been speaking to Jaxx, he was really thinking about someone else. The glib reply Jaxx meant to use died on his tongue as Moliki kissed the top of his head.

Jaxx remained silent. Waiting. But Moliki didn't elaborate. Instead he rose from the water, carrying Jaxx with him. "Stay with me, lovely boy. Let your master comfort you tonight."

Nodding his consent, Jaxx let Moliki blot the silken water from his body and take him to bed.

***

In the House of Notoni promotion wasn't necessarily considered a positive. In the trainees' quarters the slaves were looked after closely, protected to the extent that Trainer and Healer and the others tasked with their health and well-being could manage. But once a slave earned their silver collar the only thing that could protect them was their wits and a good deal of luck, or so Ianto learned when word got out that he'd been assigned the position of Clock's Shadow.

Shadows, he was further informed, tended to have short service lives. The job put them in close proximity to Citizen Notoni. She, in turn, tended to vent her temper or her lusts on them as the mood suited her. That he was Clock's Shadow was only a minor safeguard. The last holder of the position had been ordered to remain behind after an end of the day briefing and then been carried out of Notoni's bedchamber the next morning … in pieces.

Ianto did his level best to keep his head down and blend into the background when he wasn't actively in Clock's service. When she was on the move in the course of her duty to Citizen Notoni, he kept her electronic tablet and stylus at the ready, anticipating its use so she had only to raise her hand before he placed it on her palm. The same with her other tools of office. They were all neatly stored in the satchel he wore over his shoulder and always ready at a moment's notice, so that she never had to ask twice, and he never called undue attention to himself. In her office, his job was much the same. He acted as her errand boy, fetched meal trays that he prepared himself, and generally made himself indispensable as Clock carried out the instructions of her mistress.

At night he thought of Wales and Jack as he warmed Clock's bed. If the face and the body in his fantasies didn't quite mesh with the man he had known before the Rift had carried him away, then Ianto tried not to think too hard about it.

His incompetency at Moringan was considered an asset. Clock taught him a few words she considered necessary for the smooth running of her operation, after which she was content to convey her instructions with sign language. Though he was now fluent, Ianto was careful to keep up his pretence, frowning with frustration and miming his confusion when her instructions came at too fast of a clip. It was almost a perfect set up.

The only downside was they were in each other's company constantly. There were plenty of opportunities to listen and learn about day to day operations, shipping schedules, and business dealings, but almost no opportunities to rummage the desk for spare collar controllers or to attempt to learn the computer system. He couldn't even get a message to Jaxx. After a breakdown in negotiations there had been a communications embargo. No messages, either electronic or hand delivered, were passed between the Houses of Notoni and Moliki. It was maddening to be so close to what he needed and yet so far.

Once again Moliki was the main topic of conversation. Ianto pricked up his ears, even as he did his best to fade even further into the background as Clock respectfully debated strategy with their mistress.

"He won't call my bluff!" Citizen Notoni shot Ianto a significant look. "He won't dare. He knows me too well. He knows if I say I'll release the vidfiles to the Commission then I'll release the vidfiles and he'll be ruined. It's as simple as that."

"Yes, but at what cost to you, mistress?" Clock asked, taking a rare liberty. "Your interests and his are already too closely intertwined. If you'd made this play before the Asmolen Venture, then I'd agree, it would be an excellent strategy. But now, if Moliki goes down, he'll take your empire down with him. The financial loss would be crippling."

"Show me the edited vidfile."

From his position by the door, Ianto couldn't see Clock's desktop display. But he didn't need to. The audio portion was enough. It took him straight back to the night of the bacchanalia. Involuntarily he shuddered in remembered pleasure at the sound of Jaxx's voice, low and throaty, as he whispered unintelligible reassurances into Ianto's ear, and, it seemed, into a microphone embedded in his collar.

"Moliki consorting with not one, but two, outworlders!" Citizen Notoni said gleefully. "A forbidden practice punishable by public censure. A guaranteed loss of his seat on the Trading Council if this gets out. And you want me to hold back?"

Notoni studied the screen, and the look on her face said she was imagining her triumphant moment as she exposed Moliki's debauchery to People That Mattered.

Ianto shivered again, this time not from remembered pleasure but from loathing.

"And everyone will know who engineered his downfall!" Clock countered. She spoke in a low, respectful voice, but her objection was vehement. "It's obvious from the point of view how the vid was captured. You've violated a Rule of Hospitality by obtaining this evidence. And if it gets out, and it will, my lady, mark my words, then you'll be damaged just as badly as Moliki. No gambling syndicate is worth that sort of risk. Think of the fallout to your reputation! Besides, Moliki wasn't the only caught that night in dubious circumstances. Who says the Commissioners won't close ranks and protect one of their own?"

"Mind your tone!" Citizen Notoni snapped sharply. She yanked her flail out of her belt and brought it down with a crack against the side of the desk.

Clock dropped her head, exposing her neck submissively. Ianto held his breath waiting for the next blow to fall. Time seemed to stretch inexorably.

The moment passed. Citizen Notoni put away her flail. "Perhaps a more bold approach. We could go after them all."

The vidfile played on. Citizen Notoni stared at the screen for several moments as she considered making an even more audacious grab for power than usurping Citizen Moliki. Ianto heard himself cry out as he was overwhelmed by the attentions of Jaxx and his master as he watched Clock bite the inside of her cheek rather than caution her mistress against overreaching.

"Invite Moliki," Citizen Notoni said at last. "Tell him … tell him I've been needlessly obstreperous in my demands, and I'm willing to take a more modest percentage of the Kolish harvest. As a show of my good will, and to heal the rift between our houses, I'd like him to be my guest. All hospitality to be provided." She looked at Clock expectantly. "Well, get on with it."

Clock bobbed her head and pulled out a scroll and pen from her desk. "Yes, mistress. Shadow, send for a runner."

Ianto nodded and slipped out of the room, his thoughts roiling. Citizen Notoni was baiting a trap. Somehow he had to get word to Jaxx and let him know.

To be concluded … 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As events come to a head, Citizen Notoni puts her plan to take down Citizen Moliki into action and a conspiracy is hatched that results in major changes for everyone at both great houses.

***

It had been a busy morning and Jaxx was looking forward to lunch. He revved the engine on the hovercraft, just to make the ride a little more interesting, then throttled back quickly as a runner wearing Notoni's livery came into view. He pulled up alongside and smiled into a familiar face. "Hey Three, what's the news?"

The Fetch lifted his satchel. "The communications embargo is over. I've got a dispatch for your master."

Jaxx whistled low. "Progress. You better hop in. I'll give you a lift."

Three smiled back at him. "Thanks."

"So what's been going on around your parts?" Jaxx asked, trying to work himself up to what he really wanted to know: how was Ianto?

Three shrugged back at him. "The mistress keeps as she does. The rest of us endure. I spend sun up to sun down on the road and the night nursing my feet. The ride is much appreciated."

Notoni was up to something, Jaxx translated. Something that had her runners at a hop. "I'm always glad to help out a fellow Fetch," Jaxx said. "Hey, listen, there's a guy working on your estate. He's tall, about my height. Probably has a furry face." Jaxx mimed a beard.

"You mean Clock's Shadow?" Three replied. "He's as well as can be hoped for."

"Clock's Shadow?" Jaxx said. "When did that happen?"

Three shrugged, squinting at his feet as he tried to fix the date. Finally he shook his head. "Weeks back, I think. All I know is these days, he's never out of her sight. Day or night, poor gill-less creature." He chuckled. "But that's why they call them Shadows, isn't it?"

"Why do say it like that?" Jaxx asked. "As if you're sorry for him."

Three looked at Jaxx with a pitying expression. "Because I may run my poor feet bloody and sleep on a pallet woven from iron kelp, but it means that I get to spend my days out of reach of the mistress's flail and the only bed I warm at night is my own. Your furry friend doesn't have those luxuries."

Put that way, Jaxx could see Three's point. The gates of the estate hove into view. Greeter waved as she let them through. Jaxx veered left and took the road to the service entrance. "I'll take your dispatch in to the master," he said as they set down. "Do you need a reply?"

Three nodded. "I'm to wait."

Jaxx put his arm around the other Fetch's shoulders. He was thin. The sort of thin that came from working too hard and being perpetually on short rations and his colour was closer to a faded pale pink rather than a more robust shade of healthy coral. "Then you'd better wait in the commissary. Cook should be setting out lunch right about now. I'll bet a double helping of trillin and buds wouldn't go amiss."

Three swallowed as if his mouth had started watering profusely. "If it's no trouble." He handed over the message tube.

Jaxx led Three into the commissary and then pressed him down onto a bench. "Not a bit. Enjoy your lunch." He slipped into the kitchen and had a quiet word with Cook, then took the dispatch to Moliki's office.

There was a delayed reply to his knock. When he entered, Moliki was seated at his desk. It was littered with dispatch tubes from the morning post. "Is everything all right?" Jaxx asked.

Moliki frowned at the opened scrolls and tubes. "There wasn't a dispatch from Telos this morning. It's not like Seer to be late with his weekly report." He rifled through the tubes and parchments again, as if he hoped resorting them would make one more appear. "Still, he _is_ busy," he said softly, more to himself than to Jaxx. "It could have slipped his mind." He picked up a thick file. "We're breaking ground on a new habitat dome, you see. In fact, I was thinking of taking a little trip to inspect the new construction for myself." He glanced up at Jaxx. "It'd be good to see old friends, don't you think?"

"Always," Jaxx said. Not that he had many to visit any more. "Speaking of which, there's news. Maybe not from an old friend, more like an old rival. Citizen Notoni sent this." He handed over the message tube. "Her Fetch is waiting in the commissary for a reply."

Moliki opened the tube and extracted the scroll. He broke the seal and his face became nonplussed. "A new tactic then, I see. Notoni extends the hands of friendship and hospitality. She's invited us to her villa for a conciliatory meal." He glanced up at Jaxx. "She's requested that I bring you along ... to provide entertainment."

Jaxx felt his breath hitch. "Did she now." As much as he was looking forward to seeing Ianto again, something didn't seem quite right. "That's unusual. She usually provides the floor show." In all the times and all the meetings he'd attended at Moliki's side, he'd only been brought to provide the entertainment at House Notoni once, and that had been at the orgy.

"I agree," Moliki replied. "It is strange. Notoni's biggest failing is her desire to control everything she sees, even the entertainment at a business dinner. Still," He shrugged his massive shoulders. "if she's come to her senses at last, she may be attempting contrition. And since that's not a natural state for her, she may be overcompensating."

"Or she may be trying to lure you into a sense of false security," Jaxx said softly. "Sir."

"Clever boy," Moliki said fondly. "Tell Notoni's messenger that we accept. Have your lunch, and then a nice long swim. Tell Clock I'm not to be disturbed, I need to think on this a while."

Jaxx glanced at the window with its view of the pool, both above and below the waterline, and mentally shrugged. If watching him swim laps helped Moliki work out the machinations of a business rival then who was he to judge? "Yes, sir. Shall I bring you a tray first? You haven't been eating much lately."

Moliki smiled a trifle wistfully. "I will feast with my eyes, lovely boy." He scrawled out a message and put it Notoni's dispatch tube. "Now run along and play."

***

Clock was trying to lose herself in busywork, auditing grain inventories that had already been checked and rechecked by underlings at various shipping depots. Ianto watched, wondering what had been said during the top secret morning conference that had shaken her so profoundly. Unlike the usual morning briefing everyone, including Shadows, from the mistress's normal retinue had been excluded.

There was a knock at the door. At a wave from Clock, Ianto admitted a breathless runner. She handed over a message tube. "Urgent from the spaceport."

Ianto nodded his thanks as his hand closed around the tube. The runner bobbed her head both at him and at Clock, and backed out of the room.

"Lock the door and give me that."

Clock half rose from behind her desk with her hand extended. Ianto did as he was ordered and then took up his station again next to the door, even though he was burning with curiosity as Clock broke the seal and extracted the scroll inside. She slammed the message tube on her desk. "Commerce is war, but the battles are meant to be conducted honourably. The mistress has gone too far this time!" She got out from behind the desk and began to pace. "I've got to stop this. How do I stop this?"

She looked at Ianto with a beseeching eyes. Ianto frowned back at her in genuine incomprehension. He wasn't sure what _this_ was, although it most likely had something to do with the trap Notoni was setting for Citizen Moliki.

If she'd been talked down from blackmail then what could be both more subtle and worse? He racked his brain. The message had come from the spaceport. Sabotage? Blowing up a transport could cost lives and do a lot of property damage. Then again, the threat of the damage could be just as effective as the actual act. Was Citizen Notoni going in for extortion?

Whatever Notoni's plan, Clock didn't want any part of it. After all the atrocities she must have witnessed serving at her mistress's side, she'd finally reached her limit. He didn't like Clock, she had used him as casually as Notoni had, but _this_ was the opportunity he had been waiting for. It was a golden chance to spur Citizen Notoni's most loyal servant to rebellion. "You," he said very deliberately. "Hold keys. Hold power. Use it."

Clock stared at Ianto like he had lost his mind. As she contemplated his face, he wondered if he'd misjudged the level of her outrage and she'd just been letting off the steam necessary to do her job without risking the wrath of the mistress. Her eyes narrowed and her head cocked to one side. "How?"

It would help if he had a clue as to her dilemma, but Ianto still wasn't sure how much trust he could extend to Clock. Questioning her directly would be useful, but until he was sure of where her loyalty lay, he didn't want to come clean about his language skills. He wondered if he'd done anything to make her suspicious, and if this was an elaborate trap to ensnare him rather than Moliki. It seemed prudent to stay his course and try and draw her out a little further before making a leap of faith. 

"Manage tomorrow," he replied in broken Moringan. "Slaves – " With his finger, Ianto drew an imaginary circle around her. "Not Mistress."

"You mean make sure all the slaves and functionaries at tomorrow's meeting with Moliki are loyal to me, and not to her?" Clock's frown deepened. "That way when she makes her big move, whatever it is, I can stop it?" She smiled rather ruefully and patted Ianto on the shoulder. "That's a nice thought. A good idea." She touched his temple and the smile became kind. "But then what? She'll kill me. I'd never be able to run far enough away." She mimed running and hiding. "To escape her wrath."

Far be it for him to put his faith in another slaveholder, but everything Ianto had witnessed told him that Citizen Moliki was an honourable being who would reward handsomely someone who had shown him loyalty. "Master Moliki protect."

Clock closed her eyes. She was so agitated that her gill slits fluttered. She seemed to reach some kind of decision. When she opened her eyes again there was a determination in them that wasn't there before.

"Attend," she ordered Ianto crisply. "Go to the pleasure pavilion. Let no one see you." She made a walking gesture with her fingers and mimed pressing against a wall. "Look in the pool. Come straight back and tell me what you see."

Ianto nodded that he understood her pantomime and then he unlocked the door and slipped from the office. At that hour he didn't really expect to see many people about. But those that would be around could cause him trouble; guards wanting to know what business he was on, or members of Citizen Notoni's extended family looking to sate their libidos in the body slaves' enclave. He stuck to the shadows all the way to the pavilion.

It was quiet. Ianto paused and listened. There was nothing but the soft lap of water against the side of the pool. He frowned. There was no accompanying sound of the circulating machinery. The water should have been still. Cautiously, he crept to the vidscreen and, after taking a breath, hit the control for the underwater display. Swimming serenely, half way down, was a new sea monster, just as big, if not bigger, than the one that had ravaged Petal.

Ianto slammed off the display and blew out the breath he had held, shutting his eyes to blot out the memory of the grasping tentacles cruelly encircling the hapless slave, and then he ran all the way back to Clock's office to make his report.

***

Notoni had doubled down. She had the vidfile and she had a slave; a member of Moliki's household so trusted he was left on his own to look after his master's interests on Telos. Worse, despite all of Clock's eyes and ears, he'd been stashed somewhere off the radar. All they knew was whatever Notoni had planned, it involved an ultimatum and a giant squid. Ianto didn't really need Clock to connect the dots for him. He'd seen what the squid could do. And no doubt Notoni had a vidfile of that too.

There was a knock at the door. Clock answered the door herself, instead of instructing Ianto to do it. She scowled at the page on the other side as she peered through the the gap.

"Beg pardon, Clock, but the mistress says your shadow's to go stay with the body slaves tonight. She wants him there right away."

Clock stiffened and then she caught hold of herself and nodded. "We're just finishing up some reports. I'll send him directly." She shut the door and leant upon it, her face drawn with frustration and worry.

They had no plan and they were out of time. Notoni's grand scheme was already in motion, and whatever it was, Ianto still had a part in it. He had one idea and he wasn't even sure if it was plausible. He pointed at his collar and then at the shock controller at Clock's waist. He then mimed getting a jolt. Then he did it again, only this time he made a dialling back motion and mimed nothing happening.

"Deactivate the collar?" Clock said. Ianto nodded. "I can't completely. I don't have the authority, only Overseer does and he's loyal to the mistress. But I can do something … " She hurried to her desk, unlocked a seldom used drawer and retrieved a device similar looking to the one she wore. "Down."

Ianto dropped to his knees with his head bent. Clock made an adjustment to the device she held and then she put it against his collar. "Up." She gave him a tight-lipped nod of satisfaction. "Sting, but not bite. No matter how hard they try."

He nodded back. It was the best they could do with short notice and few options. At least now he could act without fear of being dropped in his tracks by a dose of potentially lethal electricity.

Clock patted Ianto on the shoulder. She smiled, but it was a wavering thing that filled him with dread. "Now, you better not keep the mistress waiting."

Ianto let himself out of the office. All the way to the body slaves' enclave, he worried, and he wondered if maybe Clock's outburst had caused Notoni to have suspicions about her loyalty. If so, maybe the trap she was baiting was as much for her assistant as it was for Moliki. They were treading into dark waters and when he approached his destination, they became even murkier.

There were guards – two hulking citizens armed with pikes and collar controllers – standing in front of the door. Guards were unusual. Normally, the visitors and residents were allowed to pass without witnesses. Discretion reigned in this part of the villa. Even then, the house security retinue was composed of slaves, not citizens. Whoever stood at the door were Notoni's picked men.

They scowled as Ianto approached, but his entrance had been authorised, so he was allowed to pass. Inside, the chamber was deserted. Or not quite. The front of the room was arrayed with upholstered pallets and fainting couches on which the slaves could recline, the better to display themselves to the visiting citizens. But if a citizen didn't want to take a slave to their quarters, there were curtained off recreating areas at the back, so that service could be rendered in private. From the enclosure directly in front of him, someone moaned and a blue hand rose and fell through a gap in the curtains. Deftly circumventing cushioned pallets and couches, Ianto hurried to investigate.

On the bed, a pale blue man was slowly rousing to wakefulness. He wore a blue collar with Moliki's insignia and a plain bronze collar, like the one Ianto had been fitted with at the auction house. He opened his eyes just as Ianto leant over him and smiled weakly upward, and then immediately shut his eyes again and put long, elegant and delicately webbed hands to his temples.

"Easy there. Just take it slowly," Ianto said. "Do you want to try sitting up?"

The man nodded, winced, and then nodded again, gratefully this time, as Ianto helped him upright and put a pillow behind him for support. "Drink?"

There was a pitcher and bowls on one of the tables just outside the door, a refreshment station for the convenience of the guests. Ianto patted the man on the shoulder and went to see what was available. Unsurprisingly, it was water. He poured a bowl and hurried back inside with it. He held the bowl steady as the other man sipped. "Thank you."

There wasn't a lot of doubt in Ianto's mind as to whom he'd been imprisoned with, but it was always good to be sure of the facts. "You're Moliki's agent, aren't you."

"Seer. And this – " He looked around the lavish bedchamber. " – judging by your collar, is House Notoni. I take it I'm a prisoner?"

Ianto nodded. "You're a bargaining chip. As, I suppose, am I." He raised his hand in greeting. "Ianto Jones, currently known as Clock's Shadow. Hello."

Seer nodded a greeting as he handed the bowl back. "What's her game?"

"Notoni, you mean?" Ianto replied. Seer patted on the bed in invitation and Ianto perched on the edge. "We're, that's Clock and I, aren't exactly sure. Although we know it involves extortion; more specifically Moliki handing over the lion's share of his profits or else you get to take a swim with a giant squid."

The word squid evidently didn't translate into something Seer could understand. He pulled an inquisitive face. "Sorry," Ianto apologised. "I'm not from around here, I don't know what they're properly called. It's big." He stretched his arms out wide to give a sense of its scale. "Lots of tentacles. An aggressive hunter."

Seer's eyes widened in horrified recognition. "A talonbar? Sign over your credits or the slave gets it. Is that her plan?" He slumped against the pillow. "Then there's no hope. She's already won."

"What makes you say that?" Ianto asked.

"Because I'm not just Moliki's Seer. I'm his business agent, yes, but he's more than that to me, and I to him. He won't risk my life for money. He'd sooner jump in with the talonbar himself."

Puzzle pieces shifted in Ianto's head as more parts of Notoni's plan fell into place. "You're lovers."

Seer shook his head. "Lovers implies a mere physical connection. What Moliki and I share, it's profound. Two beings who have one heart. One soul. Without the other we are nothing."

Ianto had a flash memory of being mocked by Jack for his provincial notions regarding sex and relationships. Given that he considered himself fairly liberally minded, he had resented Jack's patronising attitude. Now he saw Jack's point, but he still needed clarification of how a relationship could be both simultaneously wide open and completely exclusive. "I don't understand. You live on separate planets. Moliki has Jaxx. I thought – "

"On Moringa it is forbidden for a citizen and an off-worlder to enjoy congress," Seer explained. "There are serious penalties. A citizen who recreates with his slave risks social and financial ruin. But they're still fascinated by us. So over time, they developed the practice of recreation by proxy."

"The sex shows," Ianto said.

Seer nodded. "If you like."

Ianto didn't like, but he gestured for Seer to continue. "But a few citizens can't deny themselves their curiosity. They take the risk. Moliki took the risk with me and for a time, we were happy."

"What happened?"

Seer shrugged. "What happens when you are besotted? You get careless. We were nearly found out. By Notoni, as it happens. So for my safety, and for his, Moliki sent me away. I went, but I had one provision. I know my beloved has needs and if we were to be parted, perhaps indefinitely, I wanted them to be met. I held auditions for my replacement, discarding many until I came across Jaxx. He was perfect; at loose ends, sexually adventurous, and willing to be discreet. A bargain was struck for one year of his service." Seer exhaled. "We thought by that time any whispers about Moliki and myself would have died down and perhaps I could at least visit. A less than perfect arrangement, I grant you, but one we thought we could live with. But it was too late."

"How so?"

"The heart wants what the heart wants. Moliki had bonded and although Jaxx has been an exemplary companion, he isn't me. The horrible irony about this entire situation is that Moliki is in the process of selling up, divesting his business interests so that he can leave Moringa forever and start over on Telos. I'm building him a home there, you see, a new habitat with all of the comforts of home, but none of the prejudices. But once again Notoni seems determined to spoil our happiness."

"She wants a cut from both the top and the bottom of the Telos operation," Ianto said.

"I know. And that's the one concession that Moliki won't grant. He's willing to take a loss on the contracts that they're partnered on, in the long run, they're immaterial. But the construction and maintenance costs of our new home are exorbitant. Plus, if he concedes, Moliki will be tied to Notoni forever." Seer gave Ianto a sour look. "I'd rather take my chances with the talonbar. They're grasping, but predictable, and Notoni most definitely is not." He studied Ianto's face for a moment. "What's your part in all this?"

"Not sure, really," Ianto replied. "Her original plot was straight blackmail. She has a vidfile of Jaxx and me … recreating with Moliki. Clock talked her out of using it because it was taken with a collar-cam and that violated the rules of hospitality?"

Seer nodded he understood.

"They had a pretty violent row about it. I've never seen Clock actually raise her voice or lose her temper before. Evidently, it was a step over the line."

"Clock has been with Notoni since she slithered out of the hatching pool. First as a companion and then, when she ascended, as her primary advisor. She's the only person who could rein in her excesses." Seer looked grimly around the bedchamber. "At least until now." He sighed. "I suppose it had to happen eventually. So she has me, and she has you. I take it that soon she'll have Jaxx and Moliki as well?"

"Tomorrow," Ianto said. "Notoni has arranged a meeting. As a show of contrition and reconciliation she invited Jaxx along to provide the … entertainment. I suspect that's where I'm supposed to come into play. Notoni will show a vid of what happened the last time a slave was introduced to a talonbar. If Moliki stands fast, then she'll use me to drive home that she's serious. If he still won't give in then it will be your turn."

"She's mad," Seer said softly.

"She's completely ruthless and has a love of violence." Now that all the facts were at hand, it all seemed so horribly simple. "For her, it probably seems like a perfectly reasonable course of action."

Seer dropped his head into his hands. He stayed that way for several moments and then he looked up again. "So what can we do?"

Ianto shrugged hopelessly. "Pray someone accidentally feeds the talonbar? I don't know. By the time I can warn Jaxx, it will be too late. We'll just have to keep our eyes open and grab any opportunity we can. Until then, you should get some rest. When we get our chance we'll probably need to move fast."

The bed was generously proportioned. Seer scooted over to one side. Figuring he should heed his own advice, Ianto got under the filmy blanket and shut his eyes.

***

Jaxx had been up at least half the night trying to soothe his restless master, employing every trick he knew to get him to wind down. But not even a relaxing bath followed by vigorous sex and a long cuddle afterwards had kept Moliki from getting out of bed, when he'd thought Jaxx had fallen asleep, and pacing the floor. He was sure that something was wrong.

Moliki's worry communicated itself. Jaxx sat in the kitchen hunched over a bowl of roasted coffea and tried to pacify himself by breathing the steam and thinking of Ianto, but that only seem to drive his anxiety. Notoni was up to something, and somehow, Ianto was smack in the middle. He took a sip and then put his bowl down. He already had battle nerves, he didn't need a dose of stimulants to get his stomach grinding as well. The morning gong sounded, calling the rest of the servants to breakfast. Discreetly, so as not to hurt Cook's feelings, he dumped his bowl into the sink and went outside to get some air.

He pushed, pumping his arms and walked with long-legged strides all the way down the drive to the gatehouse. Greeter was at her post. She wasn't alone. Three was there as well. Jaxx accelerated to a jog and when he looked up from his feet, Three broke into a broad grin.

"Just the person I was hoping to see," he said. "I've got a bit of news I thought you'd be interested in."

Jaxx tilted his head. "Yeah? What's that?"

"Funny thing, really. I have a pod-mate that's assigned to Transport Services, and I saw him in the marketplace. He told me that he'd seen Moliki's old Fetch coming off a shuttle with a couple of citizens and a driver in the mistress's livery. They hustled him into a closed hovercraft and drove away. This was before the mistress decided she was going to start speaking to your master, mind. I thought it a bit odd."

Seer hadn't made his weekly dispatch and although Moliki hadn't said anything more about it, it was pretty obvious that he was bothered by the deviation from their regular schedule. "Yeah, you're right. That is odd. Thanks. Greeter, let him in for breakfast."

Three looked longingly towards the villa. "I'd like to stop, but I can't. I'm expected. Everyone is supposed to be back on the grounds by second bell."

Stopping to pass the news had been a risk, but Three had thought it was one worth taking to share the gossip. Jaxx grasped Three's hands briefly to show his gratitude and then slapped him on the shoulder. "You better get a move on then." He turned away and ran, full tilt, for the villa. He saw Moliki walking out towards the pool and veered to intercept him. "It's a trap."

"What?" Moliki looked at Jaxx blankly, his thoughts obviously far away. "Catch your breath, boy, and tell me what's the matter."

Jaxx bent over at the waist. He put his hands on his thighs, sucked in a lungful of oxygen and then let it slowly out again before straightening up. "Notoni has Seer. He was spotted in the company of some of her security goons at the spaceport. It didn't sound like he was with them willingly."

Moliki paled alarmingly. "I knew it," he said softly. "I knew something was wrong. What do we do?"

Jaxx's thoughts spun. If Seer was in danger then that meant that Ianto was in trouble too. Forewarned is forearmed. It was his first sergeant-major's favourite saying. If you knew you were walking into an ambush at least you knew enough to keep your head down and your blaster ready. 

"You can't cancel and you can't alert the authorities, not if it means putting Seer at risk." He shrugged his shoulders. "We go in. Just like everything is fine. Everything is normal. We smile and we play our parts and we watch out for tripwires. Then we pray that Notoni hasn't worked out all the angles."

***

Clock spared one regretful look in Ianto's direction before she looked away again. He couldn't tell if that meant she hadn't been able to swap the guards who stood at watchful attention, or if she was just sorry in general for the débâcle her mistress had arranged. Whatever the message meant, events had been set in motion and now there was no turning back.

Ianto was accompanied into the pleasure pavilion by an armed escort and led to the centre stage. He had been decorated with swirls of edible body paint that would fire Jaxx's blood when he ingested it and make him half mad with passion, and dusted with a fine powder that made his bare skin sleek. He gleamed under the torchlight.

Jaxx rose from Moliki's side. He strode with his usual swagger and grinned when he saw Ianto, as if he hadn't a care in the world. It was only when they were chest to chest and Jaxx had his lips pressed against Ianto's neck did he betray himself. "Are you all right?"

Ianto gasped. Jaxx didn't need to apply aphrodisiacs, he seemed to generate his own. "Fine. Trap. Seer … hostage. Talonbar … in the ... pool, Danger!" he murmured as he rained kisses over Jaxx's face.

Jaxx took the lead, stroking Ianto's arms and chest, smiling as he caressed Ianto's beard, which desperately needed trimming. Aware of its properties, he carefully avoided touching the body paint. "Tricky," he whispered before nipping Ianto's earlobe.

Grasping Jaxx by the hips, Ianto spun him around so they were back to chest. "Wants you desperate for me," he said when no one could see his lips move. "Part of the plan."

Jaxx rolled his hips, pushing his already rampant erection between the cheeks of Ianto's arse, then pulled away and did a spin so they were chest to chest again. "I've been desperate. For weeks. Missed you."

"Jaxx," Ianto groaned. "God. Jaxx." Despite the fact he was probably going to die before the day was over, Ianto gave in to his longing. He pulled Jaxx to him, heedless of the body paint, their audience, and the talonbar in the pool.

Citizen Notoni clapped both pairs of hands together. "Separate them."

The guards were on them before either Jaxx or Ianto could react. They were pulled apart and Ianto was dragged to the edge of the pool. Notoni clapped again. A new procession of guards with Seer at the centre entered the pavilion.

"Seer!" Moliki gasped. "Notoni, what is this outrage?"

At a wave of her hand, a guard flipped the vidscreen on. The talonbar swam serenely near the bottom of the pool. Notoni made a second gesture. The view changed. Petal was snatched all over again and taken into a tentacled embrace.

Notoni smiled triumphantly. If she'd had a moustache, Ianto thought dourly, she would have twirled it. His stomach clenched and he tasted bitter bile wash over his tongue.

"Sign the scrolls and give me the interest in your casino venture. If you do, you can all go home. Even the ugly one." Notoni lifted a scroll from the table at her side. "I've deeded him over to you as a gift. If you don't, then my pet gets some new playmates. Either way, I win." She rose from her fainting couch and stood between Ianto and Seer, apparently trying to decide which one of them she was going to shove into the pool first as Jaxx struggled impotently against his captors and Clock started to weep silent tears.

They needed a diversion. Ianto could think of exactly one. He jerked backwards and fell into the water, taking his guards with him. The guards let go, too concerned about saving their own skins to worry about their prisoner. Ianto quickly swam to the side and launched himself onto stone surround. Shock and pandemonium raged. Moliki had rushed forward to help Seer. Jaxx's guards were on the ground. Clock stared at her mistress in grim triumph and then rushed ahead and shoved her backwards into the pool.

The guards, slave and citizen, stood back and watched in dumb horror as the talonbar, enraged by the disturbance to its habitat, attacked. It made a beeline for Notoni as she churned the water with all eight of her arms and legs. It grabbed her, compressing her limbs against her body and dove straight to the bottom, leaving an inky-looking trail in its wake.

Ianto shut off the vidscreen and then shut his eyes. No one needed the memory of Notoni getting a dose of her own medicine.

"Ianto!" Jaxx barrelled over and swept him into a dramatic embrace. Exhausted by the surge of fear and adrenaline, Ianto sagged into Jaxx's arms and let the breath be squashed from his lungs before he pulled away. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Fine. Never better," he lied. His legs were shaking. Ianto collapsed onto a fainting couch, appreciating the irony of the name. When the greyed-out feeling passed he looked up into Jaxx's piercing blue eyes. He had the feeling he'd lost time. "What's happening?"

Clock was over to one side, efficiently giving orders. At her instructions, guards scrambled into action. She glanced over and saw Ianto had recovered himself and smiled, not with triumph, but with resignation. Ianto thought he understood. After all, staging a cover up was the most difficult part of a conspiracy.

"A terrible accident," Jaxx said as he helped Ianto to sit upright. "A tragedy. Moringa has lost one of its leading citizens."

"The house will go into mourning," Clock proclaimed loudly. "Effective immediately. Return to your domiciles and await further instructions."

The pavilion cleared out. Clock spoke a few words to Moliki and then pressed a satchel into his hands. She then retrieved the scroll Notoni had brandished, Ianto's transfer order, and handed him that too. "Shadow. Attend!"

Ianto waved off Jaxx's offer of help and went to Clock.

"Down," she ordered.

The ground tilted a little as Ianto knelt, but his equilibrium held. Clock unlocked his collar and slipped a temporary lead over his head in its place. "You've been released from the House of Notoni, effective immediately. Title has been passed to the House of Moliki. Serve your new master faithfully and well, as you have served me," she finished with a small nod of gratitude.

Moliki clapped his hands together, drawing their attention. "Boys, I think it's time we were off. This is a house of sorrow and we have no place here."

Jaxx put one arm around Ianto and the other around Seer and they followed their master out of the pavilion.

***

"So, Ianto Jones," Jaxx said. "You're a long ways from home. Now that you have words, you want to tell me how you ended up on Moringa?"

They were sitting in the kitchen. Cook and his helper had long since cleaned up and shut things down for the night, but rumbling bellies had necessitated a raid on the leftovers.

Ianto set his roasted coffea aside and shrugged. "I'm not entirely sure. The last memory I have before I woke up in the slave trader's cells was being out on a job. There's this rift in time and space above the city where I live. It's like a giant vacuum tube, sucking things, and sometimes people up, and spitting them out again, randomly, as far as we can tell."

"Time and space?" Jaxx pulled a sceptical face. "Really?"

Ianto nodded.

"So then what happened?"

"Well, as I was saying, we were out on this recovery job. There was this long tube-like container with a control panel on the side. I'd just spotted some alien writing and I guess I accidentally hit a switch." He shook his head. "That's it. The next thing I know I'm in a cell surrounded by people I can't understand. Who don't understand me either. With no way of getting home."

"This tube. Did it have a symbol on it? Sort of an elaborate intertwined double loop. Like this." Jaxx dipped his finger in his coffea and sketched on the table.

Ianto nodded and then he frowned at Jaxx's expression. "Someone I know pulls that face. It means, 'Do you want the bad news or the not so bad news first?' You know something."

Jaxx appeared to be weighing options as he studied Ianto's face in return. "Would that person's name be 'Jack' by any chance? And would he be the one you talk about in your sleep? Tall, dark, handsome, and by an odd coincidence, bears a striking resemblance to me?"

"He's my Captain, and … " Ianto trailed off. He wasn't sure what the rules or the etiquette were about talking to different versions of the same person. He was practically positive that Jaxx wasn't a past version of Jack, and so there was no danger of accidentally altering his timeline, but practically positive and one hundred percent certain weren't the same thing. There was always the possibility that Jack had omitted details of his life before Torchwood.

"You're trying to change the subject," he said with a wry smile. "That's another thing Jack does when he doesn't want to talk about something uncomfortable. Please tell me what you know."

Jaxx gave Ianto a cheeky grin. "Sounds like I have a lot in common with this Captain Jack of yours." He sobered. "Okay, it's a war story so you better get comfortable."

Ianto waited. After a few moments of toying with his coffea bowl Jaxx gave into the expectant silence.

"This war that just ended. It was brutal. Whole planetary systems under siege. The longer it went on, the worse it got. After a while, there just weren't enough people to throw into the grinder. They could manufacture bombs and blasters, but trained troopers, that was more difficult." 

Jaxx blew out a breath. "Finally, an area commander had a bright idea. The KIA stats for raw recruits approached ninety percent. But if they survived their first campaign then those numbers dropped dramatically. Seasoned troopers had upwards of a fifty percent chance to make it through a battle. So this commander figured what they needed was more seasoned troopers and fewer greenies." Jaxx's gaze flickered from his bowl to Ianto's face and back again.

"Except where do you get them from? Experienced troopers don't grow on trees. But why let that get in the way of a good idea?" Jaxx's expression grew sour. "Cloning isn't anything new, but accelerating the growth of that clone to adulthood and giving it a whole lifetime of experience, that was a concept that was rife with possibilities."

Ianto felt light-headed for the second time that day as his imagination leapt ahead of Jaxx's story. "They didn't."

Jaxx pressed his lips together and nodded. "They did. Hundreds of pairs of experienced boots on the ground. It was a rousing success. The only problem was, they didn't think past the first battle. There were complications."

"What sort of complications?" Ianto asked quietly.

"Bureaucratic nightmare for starters. And then there was the cock up with the families. Multiple death notifications. Although I'm sure a few of them appreciated the multiple pay packets and the extra benefits." Jaxx smiled softly as if recalling an old memory before looking back at Ianto. "They might have been clones, but every trooper still expected to receive his wages."

He shrugged. "They just didn't think the project through. So after the trial, it was scrapped. The cloning pods were loaded up onto transports to take back to area HQ." He hesitated, toying with his half empty coffea. "Rumour has it that they didn't all make it back."

"You're saying that was a cloning pod," Ianto stared unseeing at the worn surface of the table. "That I'm a clone?"

Jaxx reached over and touched Ianto's hand. "I'm saying it fits. Except I don't quite get how, if that pod dropped out of your rift, you ended up here. Unless ... you said it works both ways."

Ianto put his hand to the back of his neck, massaging out a tension knot as he worked through possible scenarios. "If there was a negative rift spike on top of the initial event... and the Rift works trans-dimensionally rather than being confined to a single universe..." He nodded and his expression grew resigned as he considered the facts before him. "So, I'm not Ianto Jones."

"No, see, that's what I'm telling you," Jaxx said as he wrapped Ianto's hand in his own. "You _are_ Ianto Jones. You're just not _that_ Ianto Jones. You're a whole new model with all of his memories, right up until his data was downloaded into that cloning pod."

Ianto looked down at their joined hands, and then he blew out a breath filled with accumulated tension. He gave Jaxx a quiet smile. "It's a relief actually."

"How so?"

"All this time, I've been thinking that Jack would be going out of his mind with worry, searching for me, trying to get me back. Sometimes the Rift returns what it takes, you see, but not always. And those that do come back – " Ianto hesitated as he thought of the survivors at Flat Holm and felt a wash of profound gratitude that he would never be counted amongst their numbers. "– sometimes they're so damaged by the experience … Well, lets just say they're never quite themselves again."

"Damaged?" Jaxx said softly.

"Traumatised," Ianto explained. "On Earth, space exploration is still in its infancy. As a people we're not really geared to deal with …" He glanced around the kitchen, trying to think of a polite way to say 'little green men' without sound overly xenophobic. "… people different from ourselves. It puts us at a disadvantage. Anyway, if I'm not riftnapped, then that means that Jack isn't looking for me. I'm … glad."

"Are you?" Jaxx said, "You hesitated a little there."

Ianto dropped his gaze to the table again. "This is going to sound rather silly, but for all these months I've been comforted by the idea that he was tearing down the walls of time and space, looking for me. But now I know he's not. He and Ianto, the real Ianto, went home from that recovery mission. Jack would have insisted that Ianto had a thorough going over by Owen, that's the team medic, and then they would have gone back to mine, his."

It was odd recounting all of this to Jaxx. Ianto could see it all in his head so clearly. Knowing that it hadn't actually happened to him made it all the more strange.

"Jack would have spent the rest of the evening shooting Ianto worried looks until Ianto took him to bed to prove that there was nothing the matter with him. And then the next morning, they would have gone on as if nothing had ever happened."

"You can't pine for another man's life, Ianto." Jaxx got up from the table. He shifted to Ianto's side of the bench and took over massaging his neck.

"Mmm, that feels nice," Ianto said as Jaxx dug into the knots he couldn't reach and soothed the tension away. "I suppose you're right. I just haven't got used to the idea yet that I'm not me."

"You're not him, you mean," Jaxx corrected. "You're not Ianto Jones, rift artefact collector, who's deeply in love with his gallant and dashing Captain Jack."

"No, I'm Ianto Jones, slave. Late of the House Notoni, now provisionally of the House Moliki. It doesn't quite have the same ring about it."

Jaxx gathered Ianto against his chest. "So how does Ianto Jones, First Mate and Executive Officer to Freighter Captain Jaxx of the Moliki Fleet sound instead? I could use a man who keeps his head and is quick on his feet in a tough spot. Seems to me you'd fit the bill."

Ianto glanced over his shoulder and up at Jaxx. "And does this position come with benefits?"

Jaxx gave Ianto a saucy smile. "Adventure. Excitement. Unusual situations, and that's just in the pilot's berth. The job should be pretty interesting too."

"Sexually harassed by my employer, at least there's some consistency in the multiverse," Ianto quipped.

"It's not harassment, it's a perk," Jaxx insisted before kissing Ianto softly. "Come back to my quarters and I'll prove it to you." He pulled Ianto to his feet and led him quietly out of the kitchen and into the next phase of his new life.

***

Ianto had his eyes fixed on the road ahead of him, but he could sense Jack's contemplative gaze. "I'm fine. I lost a few skin cells. The wound didn't even need a plaster."

"I know." Jack replied. He sounded defensive. "You didn't see what I saw. All right?"

"I know." Ianto tried to keep his irritation in check, but his mortality was one of those things he couldn't alter, like the way his ears turned pink when his blood was up and the fact that his eyes had stopped changing colour midway between blue and grey and so strictly speaking they couldn't definitively be called either. Some day he would die and Jack would have to go on without him. It wasn't something he liked to think about, and neither did Jack. "I'm sorry."

They lapsed into silence and stayed that way until they reached the all-night kebab shop that did surprisingly adequate Chinese takeaway. They matched to see who would stay in the car and who would pay for the food. Jack lost. Ianto was glad of it. He needed a few minutes without anyone hovering.

Owen had pulled him aside at the second recovery site to do a field medical check up. Then, once they'd got back to the Hub, he insisted on running a more comprehensive survey.

Gwen had asked him twice, 'All right, pet?' and then she broke a coffee mug trying to help clear up the dishes.

Even Toshiko had asked, but that had been more out of rote courteousness than actual concern, because her real fixation was the ream of new data the double rift event had created. She was still processing numbers, and would keep at it until they returned in the morning and Owen insisted she go home to get some proper sleep.

But it was Jack whose eyes never left him. Ianto could feel them on the back of his neck from across the Hub. It was Jack who found excuses to touch his arm or graze their fingers against one another's as he was handed reports or cups of coffee until Ianto wanted to take him aside and tell him in no uncertain terms to stop coddling, because he wasn't going to die. At least not tonight.

Ianto blew out a breath. He was tired. And there was Jack, smiling at him, although his eyes were still veiled. He turned over the engine as Jack got into the car and then killed it again as he reached a decision.

"What is it?" Jack asked.

"Egg rolls," Ianto said. "Did you get them?"

"Double order," Jack replied. "Same as always. Why?"

"I'm lifting the 'no eating in the car' rule. Have both of them. Right now."

"Okay," Jack said, drawling the word out as he fished the little paper sack out of the carrier bag. "Why?"

"Because you're going to need your strength." Ianto cranked the engine over and pulled out onto the empty street. "Once we get back to mine, we're putting the takeaway in the fridge for breakfast."

"Again, why?" Jack asked.

Ianto could feel blood pinking his ears. He looked in the rear view mirror and saw his eyes, neither blue nor grey, reflected back at him. He was who he was.

"Because Jack, I'm still here," Ianto said with quiet conviction. "And once we get home, I'm going to take you to bed and prove it to you until that haunted look leaves your eyes and you believe me."

He hit the control switch that activated the emergency services override for the traffic lights and shut off the speed cameras before flooring the accelerator all the way back to his flat so that he could go to bed, but not to sleep. It was just after midnight. 

A new day. 

Another beginning.

Another chance for the Rift to do its worst.

End


End file.
